


And Monarchs to Behold

by Beabaseball (beabaseball)



Series: O For a Muse of Fire [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Animated), Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Character Death, Child Neglect, Child Soldiers, Dystopia, Future Character Death, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Other, Playing the Long Game, Slow Build, Supervillains, The Justice League, Timeline What Timeline, Violence, revamp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 60,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4604103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beabaseball/pseuds/Beabaseball
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham City is one of the most dangerous cities in the world and one of the only places the Justice League finds it better to simply try to ignore, but when a criminal organization headed by the mysterious Bat is provoked to strike outside of Gotham's borders, inaction is no longer an option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overviews.

The Bat was cold, and calculating, and ruthless. Logic held in him much more powerfully than emotion. Small slights he punished not out of anger, but out of the understanding that loyalty was paramount. Small slights were dealt with brutally.

But he was fair. He had his rules. He gave his orders. You followed them, or you died. Better than the deal Black Mask had offered, his guards insisted—better than working for Two Face. Go to them if you were in a certain neighborhood, or could handle a certain amount of chaos. Go to them if they came to your door and demanded it, or you wanted a bigger cut, or wanted to blow a beast’s head off—

But if you wanted rules and rigidity and some semblance of order, if you wanted to _live_ in Gotham without kidding yourself, you went to the Bat.

(the Bat did not, in fact, _need_ guards, something which was beyond apparent to those he actually accepted—he called them Canaries. Canaries in his coal mine. It frightened off most of them. The rest could only watch. It was better than Black Mask and Two-Face, they told themselves. Better than being caught in the crossfire.)

Black Mask and Two-Face lived, for now, but it was only a matter of time. Or perhaps they were already overwhelmed, and the Bat simply left them alive with some semblance of organization to distract the GCPD. It was very much the sort of thing he would do. It was heavily in his nature to use distractions, and leave the dregs to the dregs, and remove himself as far as possible from anything that might make him seem human, like pride, or greed, or lust—

Taking all this into account, it was hard to imagine how his first son had come about. 

Nightwing was all smiles, all good-natured laughs, all kind words. He offered to carry heavy objects through the halls. He joked, once, about becoming a police officer, and the Bat had laughed along with him, chilling the blood of every witness to the scene. Yet there were no executions that day.

Nightwing first appeared in the dark of a cold night, a masked ten year old dressed in green, red, and gold. _Robin,_ they’d called him then. Little Robin, who already knew the ropes of the business. Cheerful Robin, who taunted and toyed with hardened criminals. Fearless Robin, who stood beside the Bat with his tiny head held high. Robin who answered to the Bat, and to the Bat alone.

His loyalty was the only loyalty which went unquestioned. His transgressions were forgiven. His failures, overlooked.

 _Robin_ , they learned, was simply the name for the new favorites. For the protégées. One day, Robin walked into the office a few inches shorter than he’d been the day before. More broad shouldered and less refined. More red in his suit, less green. He grinned more, laughed louder, hit harder, toyed less.

 _Robin,_ the Bat hissed, and Robin would back down—eventually. And the new blue and black figure of Nightwing (who laughed) would hover on the edge of vision, a reminder of what could be made out of men.

The Bat had a fondness for orphans. It was reported on in the news, occasionally—they were not _spared_ , not necessarily, but they were considered. Looked upon. Cared for, in some manner. God help the parents of a child who came to the Bat _asking_ to be stolen away—

That was, of course, what people assumed of the third Robin, who appeared less than three years after the second had arrived.

There was fighting. The guards were all ordered out, but they all heard it, regardless. There were shouts and indignation in the cave’s main room, and hints of something like (“ _Jay, little bird, stop it! Jay!_ ” _“Don’t fuck with me, midget, I fucking swear I’ll_ —” “ _This is what you wanted. I am giving it to you, and I_ expect _you’ll show proper gratitude— Nightwing,_ names!” “ _I’m sorry, father, I was just—_ ”) wind, and fire, and thunder.

The next day, the new Robin entered through the ventilation and went many long minutes unseen hidden in cave’s support beams, while the man in the red hood stalked through the door for the first time, an assault rifle strapped to his back, with two holsters for knives and handguns at his hips.

“Put those out of my sight, Hood,” the Bat said, not needing to look up from his worktable in the middle of his office. There were no windows, only screens and walls, tables, and perches, and computers. The Bat had his own style, and his style was underground caves. A handful of guards held their places at the door, glancing at each other uneasily and watching the former Robin in the red hood begin readjusting his weapons.

(The Bat didn’t like guns. He grit his teeth at the sight of them.

“They lack—control,” he said, and said it with the strain in his throat that said more than his words ever could. Guns were not to be out in his presence, in the presence of his birds, or discharged at all unless specifically ordered. The Bat didn’t use guns, personally.

He did not need them.)  
  


Red Hood left his guns, grudgingly, with the guards at the door, and stepped further into the room until he was beside the Bat’s worktable, peering over the edge but keeping enough distance to avoid being in the way. What that distance was, none of the guards were exactly sure. Only the Robins were ever permitted close to the table at any given time.

“What are we dealing with, now?” Red Hood asked, watching the Bat fiddle with a microscope slide and several beakers.

“Fear Toxin,” Nightwing answered, when the Bat did not. He was on the far side of the room, perched near a corner he had claimed while still Robin himself. There was a bitter curve to his lips. “A man calling himself Scarecrow released it into Gotham about an hour ago. He’s been doing petty stuff for a while, now, but this actually affects our turf and people under our protection.”

“His name is Jonathan Crane,” the Bat said. Both his birds stilled. “Robin, isolate the chemicals used in it. Once we create an anti-toxin, Red Hood will dispose of him.”

The third bird—the new Robin—appeared then, slipping out from the shadows of the rafters and landing on the floor with hardly a sound, standing there as if he has always been. Red Hood shifted, Nightwing shot him a warning look, and there was no argument from either.

“Yes, sir,” the little Robin said. His suit had changed again. Long pants, this time. A shorter cape. Different gloves. He took control of the microscope the moment Batman left it alone, and began doing something with vats of dye and boiling water.

“Nightwing will assist you both, when necessary,” the Bat continued, moving away from the table to sit at the console of his massive computer. Video feeds appeared, clicking up and displaying hundreds of different camera angles. Empty streets, the rooms of the buildings above them, several manor gates, and a few city blocks that were in chaos, unnaturally thick fog rolling through, consuming a hoard of screaming people, swallowing them.

“He’s in Crime Alley.” Red Hood said, seething again, arms crossed. He sounded a bit indignant as he added, “I can handle it on my own.”

The Bat didn’t turn to look at him, but said, “I know you can. Both of you are capable, now. Nightwing is insurance.”

“Don’t take it personally. It’s not like I’m _only_ babysitting you, anyway,” Nightwing said from the worktable. He’d left his perch after the orders were given and now crouched beside the new Robin, observing his methods and double checking his results. “No offense, kiddo.”

The new Robin shook his head rapidly, blushing, and continued to work, even as Nightwing laughed.

The little wisp of a Robin stayed, shrinking in shadows, hovering near screens, unseen and unheard unless he wanted to be. Batman and Nightwing seemed to be the only two who could consistently point to where he was at any given time, a thing which only irritated Red Hood.

And then came the day when the blond Robin arrived.

No new mask joined beside her. None of the family made any introductions. Red Hood was spitting until the Bat gave him a mission to keep him occupied—total annihilation, it didn’t have to be subtle, so long as he came back in one piece, successful, and calmer.

Even then, the source of his anger was not _named_ , and so none of the guards breathed a word or asked why Robin was blond with a headband, taller than usual, and better at shit-talk than hiding in the shadows.

They continued not saying a word when the next week, the dark-haired shadowy wisp of a Robin returned, working silently beside the Bat at his table, as only one of the birds would ever be allowed to do.

The blond Robin appeared again, no less fiery than she had been her last appearance, a few days later. The dark-haired Robin vanished for three days. On and off, neither seen at the same time, until one day they were.

They walked in together, cloaked and cowled and beaked, and gladly introduced themselves as Red Robin and Batgirl. A matched set. A fearsome combination. Where Red Robin lacked brute force, Batgirl compensated in strength and a sharp instinct that Red Hood could compliment. Where Batgirl’s intuitive prowess failed her, Red Robin’s mind held strategies and gambits that could only be rivaled by the Bat himself.

They raided ships together, brought down rings and pulled them under control when something quieter than Red Hood was necessary. They went on their own plenty of times, powerful enough separate—but a horror force in tandem.

Despite that, despite everything, it was only when the next Robin appeared many, many months later—a ten year old with a sword strapped to his back and a scowl that could wither evergreens—that the guards realized the Bat wasn’t taking in orphans.

He was taking in monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is still under a lot of construction and I'm blazing through YJ and as many batman comics as I can, but for the most part just run with me (and hit me up if you have an idea) .


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was supposed to be an easy night, but then a speedster showed up and ruined everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set down as a crossover with YJ (animated) on FFnet and AO3, but I’m hoping to write it in a way that anyone who hasn’t watched YJ will still be able to follow easily

No one really talked about how he met Richard. No one but the tabloids.

Neither Dick nor Bruce mentioned it. Or, perhaps they did, in that way which they sometimes said things without really saying anything. In later years, they sometimes shared long looks over the kitchen table, as if there were something the others had missed. Sometimes, Dick would say something and Bruce wouldn’t respond at all. Sometimes Bruce would groan, and Dick would laugh, and no one was really sure if it was all a big prank being pulled or not.

Sometimes, something would come up in the newspapers, or a channel on television, and even though Bruce’s face would remain unchained, Dick would come up behind him and touch him (hand on the shoulder, or leaning against his side, or tugging at his jacket) and say, “Hey.”

Then Bruce would say, “You are far too young to be doing this,” and Dick would laugh, and they would pretend nothing passed between them. Then they resumed whatever they had been previously doing, without change, and without explanation.

Dick was thirteen by the time Jason was brought into the fold. Invited in without permission or prompt. He’d passed right through a silent alarm, alerting Bruce to the intruder getting uncomfortably close to one of their many, many hideouts—hideouts Dick had helped scout out and renovate. And when Bruce had checked the situation through a security camera, he had stood, assumed Dick would run the evening business without him, and pulled on the cowl.

Dick frowned at the screen that night, watching the aftermath, but unable to begrudge the action.

For a night, he would hold down the fort entirely on his own, but for that one long night alone, there were five long years when it was just the two of them. Five years between eight and thirteen. Five years which were secret, and passed between them like smoke.  
  
Five years which, if anyone wanted to hope to know anything about, they would have to go to the tabloids, because neither Bruce nor Dick was talking.

000 **  
**

Once, Dick came home early in the night with a split lip and a slight limp, and Bruce didn’t know what to do with himself.

The boy was eleven and a half. His uniform was intact, but clearly scuffed. He hadn’t come home injured for weeks—and while it would have been a lie to say it had been a long time since Dick last looked like _crying_ after coming home, the frustrated red and distressed pinch to his brow was uncommon. Bruce did not know what to do. Tonight should have been a very easy night. Tonight Robin should have been fine on his own.

As Dick entered the cave and his condition became more apparent, Bruce fell into the hard, cold voice he used when he was pushed beyond being a man.

“What happened?” he said, standing stock-still before the computer as Dick hesitated in the doorway.

He looked so small, standing there. Eleven and a half. Almost twelve. The left side of his face was beginning to show bruising. The yellow of his cape had blood on it, as did his green gloves.

Dick did not respond to the direct question, which was the first warning sign. Bruce forced his shoulders to relax and his voice to soften.

“Dick,” he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand, “Tell me what happened.”

This time, Dick nodded. He took a step forward of his own. A second step. One of his hands cupped his opposite elbow, fidgeting. He looked even smaller than he had a moment before. Flustered. Childish. He still had blood on his gloves.

“Are you okay with being done for the night?” Dick asked.

“You can be done for the night,” Bruce told him.

His bird flew into his arms before Bruce could even bend down quite far enough to catch him.

Eleven and a half. Tall for his age, naturally lean, but with good weight to him. He almost disappeared beneath the Batman cloak.

Bruce took a moment to allow the boy a hug before pulling back and patting his hands over the small body pressed against him. No broken bones, he deduced. Nothing obviously cracked. A light strain in one leg, but forty-two hours rest would be sufficient. He’d be benched tomorrow, then, Bruce decided. There were more bruises than at first glance, though that was common enough, and would only be remedied with time. He pulled Robin’s green gloves off Dick’s hands, one after the other, and ran his own gloved fingers over the bruised knuckles. Nothing broken there, either. The new padding worked better, it seemed.

“What happened?” Bruce said again, taking a moment to remove the cowl from his face before standing once more and leading them towards the medical bay. He pretended he didn’t notice Dick leaning somewhat against his side as they went. Robin had returned to the main chamber of the cave through the tunnel connecting from Amusement Mile. A long journey, even with the modifications he’d made to the tunnels and custom motorcycle. “Did you accomplish your goal?”

Dick shook his head, moving away long enough to hoist himself up on the med bay’s cot. He leaned down and untied his boots, letting them fall to the ground with two loud thunks. Next went the mask. The bruise was worse, beneath it. He would be wearing makeup to school in the morning to hide it. “I got interrupted.”

“By who?” Bruce said, picking up one of the many cases of bruise cream on the medical bay’s far counter.

“More Maroni thugs,” the boy spat, barring his teeth and clenching his eyes shut while Bruce applied the cream over his cheek. “And an unknown. A meta.”

He opened his eyes when Bruce frowned.

“A meta.”

“Yeah. A speedster. Red hair. Gray hoodie. Freckles. Didn’t really seem like he knew what he just walked into, but he was inexperienced.”

“I see,” he said, pursing his lips and forcing himself to relax once again. He could not relax again. _A speedster in my city._ “And your course of action?”

“I thought he was one of Maroni’s, so I tried to interrogate him.” Dick looked down at his hand. No matter how much padding Bruce added to the gloves, his knuckles were always going to ache somewhat from the force of impact against something as solid as a human skeleton. Bruce had already devoted years to cultivating the micro fractures in his own hands until, with proper preparation, he could shatter cinderblocks. Dick was still far too green to even think about such an attempt. In time, though. “It delayed me long enough that the _real_ Maronis found me.”

Bruce pursed his lips and felt himself slipping back into the cold-steel mood that defined the Bat. He had to remind himself that his boy was sitting right in front of him—not filled with holes. Not even a single gunshot wound. He didn’t need vengeance, not yet.

“You escaped.”

“It was too close,” Dick said, hanging his head. “I was careless.”

“We’ll review improved methods in the morning. In the meantime, you will write up a report and detail everything you can remember about the speedster, your fight, what he said—in addition to anything you learned from the target.”

Dick nodded. Sucked on his split lip. Bruce sighed and they both made efforts to relax their jaws.

“Is there anything else significant I should know immediately?”

Dick shook his head. Hesitated. Then shook his head again.

“Robin,” Bruce said, frowning again.

The boy cowed.

“…I don’t think the metahuman was alone.”

000

It wasn’t Roy’s fault.

It was at least 90% Wally West’s fault, and Roy was not going to take any more heat than he had to.

He had brought Wally to Gotham, yes. He had done so under the full understanding that Wally was a thirteen year old who’d only had metahuman powers for a short while, and was only two months into being trained by Central City’s Flash. He understood that meant Kid Flash’s field experience was pretty minimal.

Roy also understood that Gotham was kind of a shithole, and far more prejudiced against metahumans than Central City. _And_ , even though Roy had been to Gotham before as Oliver Queen’s ward, he hadn’t gone _without_ his mentor, and he definitely hadn’t done much outside of attending the Martha Wayne Charity Event that one time, and therefore could not really be called an expert tour guide by any stretch of the imagination—

 _However_ , Roy had only agreed to bring Wally into Gotham on the understanding that they were there during the daylight hours, planned to stay in either downtown or Amusement Mile, and used only non-meta forms of transportation like the very slightly illegal motorcycle that Roy was definitely old enough to have a license to, currently parked in a multi-level garage about six blocks away.

Even with this overwhelming evidence, the Flash and Green Arrow were still absolutely going to kill him. At least Roy had the knowledge that he definitely did not deserve it.

He was sitting outside a hospital room now, on one of the spare gurneys, even though he wasn’t at all injured and sort of felt like he was taking up valuable wall space that could have been used to prop up someone who actually _was_ injured.

Wally, on the other hand, was in the middle of getting his injuries documented. Not that the GCPD was really going to do much with the documentation—Roy knew their reputation, and wasn’t expecting anything, but records of crimes were important, and it wasn’t like they were going to get far enough into Metropolis to use a zeta tube again with Wally looking like he did. So Roy had stowed his arrows in a dumpster (even police departments like Gotham’s didn’t really appreciate it when you came into hospitals armed), hoped no one would bother to dig through the trash for a few hours, hauled Wally to the first police officer he’d found on a busy street, (getting them plenty of very public witnesses, just in case) and was rewarded with a lift to a hospital where another pair of officers from the Major Crimes Unit greeted them.

The hospital was a large, bustling place with narrow halls and low doors, and the waiting room was filled with injuries just as severe as Wally’s own. They got attention quickly enough, though, in no small part because of the two officers tapping their feet at the end of the hall, waiting to be given statements.

Wally was splinted, medicated, and set aside for treatment while the cops talked to Roy first.

He just had to hope Wally had good enough ears on him and his head was still on straight enough to hear the story Roy was cooking up to cover their asses. Stuff about how Uncle Barry was in the area for the weekend and had agreed to take them along. He and Wally snuck out for dinner—Roy had about six receipts to choose from crammed in his pocket—and, in the middle of a bathroom break, Wally had up and vanished.

“I found him a couple blocks over, about an hour later. It was already over by then; apparently a bunch of other thugs broke in and he snuck out under the gunfire.”

Which was also part of why they had to go to the cops.

The mob showing up and opening fire before asking any questions or negotiating? That wasn’t a good sign. That sounded like a really bad thing, honestly. Especially when the only people who’d been there to fire upon had been one of the mob’s own, Wally, and a homicidal toddler in tights.

That was what really caught the MCU’s attention, apparently.

“Can you describe him?” they asked.

“I wasn’t there,” Roy said. Stick to your guns. He definitely hadn’t had anything to do with clearing an escape route and dragging Wally behind cover once they were out, nope. “Walls was kinda babbling about it while I carried him. Something about Dock 42.”

One of the cops—a dark skinned woman with big round eyes and a pinched face—looked at her partner, who quickly excused himself to make a phone call.

“Ma’am, can I call his uncle, now?” Roy said as the other officer walked away. “It’s way later than we said we’d be out and I’m sure he’s getting worried.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding, and a moment later held out a cellphone. He took it on instinct. Paused. Decided he wasn’t going to ask a police officer she was trying to record his calls (did they get enough kids in here _worth_ recording their calls? He was definitely not mentioning the motorcycle license) and cross-referenced his own cellphone to get Barry Allen’s “emergency” phone number.

It was past eleven at night on the East Coast. Past ten, in Missouri. But Barry Allen picked up the phone on the second ring, bright and alert, and completely oblivious to what had gone down not two hours earlier.

“What’s up?” the Flash said, voice light but clearly ready to be briefed about some small apocalypse.

“Hey, uh, it’s me. Roy Harper, I mean.” He really hoped Flash wouldn’t kill him. It was a general League rule that you really didn’t want to kill people, but there were, of course, extenuating circumstances. Letting Kid Flash get maimed on your watch wasn’t one of those, right? “We, uh, me and Wally decided to get a bite in downtown Gotham and we might’ve run into some—”

“— _What!_ ”

Oh, yes, he was super dead.

If it were Green Arrow upset with him, that would have been a little more okay. Roy could yell back at Green Arrow, because Ollie was kind of a dick and probably just took it as a personal offense when Roy messed up, but the Flash actually gave half a fuck, so—

“We’re okay!” —So it was important Flash knew that as soon as possible. “Uh. Wally’s a little… he’s kinda banged up, but don’t freak out, he’s gonna be fine. We’re at the hospital, uh, Gotham General?”

He paused just long enough to glance at the police officer who was still watching him with her arms crossed across her chest. She nodded. He’d gotten the name right.

“We’re at Gotham General Hospital, Wally’s getting patched up and looked over, and we’re _fine,_ and I’ll explain everything when you get here, but can you please get here? Mr. Allen?”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can, Roy.”

If that was an ominous pun, he decided he’d had enough of them, tonight. The tyrannical toddler had been bad enough. “Thanks. I’ll let Walls know.”

He hung up shortly after, handing the phone to the policewoman and gave a quick smile before asking, “Can I go see him?”

“Once we’re done with him.”

“I’ll just stay out in the hall, then?”

“If you want, that’s fine, kid.”

It was another fifteen minutes before the Flash arrived as Barry Allen, signed into the hospital, and was escorted to the same room that Roy stood guard outside. By then, the officers had finished whatever it was they wanted with Wally and allowed Barry inside. Roy was motioned inside too, and perhaps because it was a clearly-adult family member who did it, no one else protested.

Wally West sat quietly on a white hospital bed with a broken nose, a two cracked ribs, a concussion, one hand mostly made up of broken fingers, and a big ol’ cartoon-looking _bump_ on his head.

To be fair, he was lucky he wasn’t also riddled with holes, but Roy Harper was not about to say that, because the instant the door closed behind them, the Flash had crossed the room in a burst of superspeed and had his hands on his nephew’s shoulders.

“What happened? _How_ did this happen?” he said.

“What are you doing here?” Wally said back.

“I called him; said we came along with him on a weekend trip and snuck out for dinner on our own. Don’t think the cops thinking we’re runaways would have helped our cases much,” Roy said, keeping close to the door. One ear listening to this conversation, the other listening for sounds from the hall.

“But—”

“He did the right thing,” said Flash, grimacing somewhat as he leaned back. “Calling me was the right thing, but I want to know what happened. I get if you couldn’t say much on the phone, but—”

Wally quailed. “—It’s not Roy’s fault!”

Damn right it wasn’t.

“—We really were just gonna go snoop around and get dinner,” Roy said, crossing his arms. “Wally said something about Amusement Mile, and I told him it was awesome, so we were gonna go get dinner and ride around some and be back home before nine for patrol. Then he bailed on me while I went to the bathroom and it took me forever to find him again.”

Wally looked up at his mentor with big, pitiful eyes, the effect of which was not lessened by his newly reset nose. “Some guys were walking by and I heard them say something about killing a kid! I couldn’t just let them kill a kid!”

Barry’s stern look visible softened and his shoulders relaxed. He took a deep breath and shifted to sit beside Wally on the hospital bed, one hand coming to rest on the boy’s back. “Okay. Okay, I can’t really say I wouldn’t do the same thing. I’m proud of you, Wally, but I wish you’d have been more careful.

“Sorry,” Wally said, slumping against his uncle.

“It’s okay. You’re still new to all this. Something like this was going to happen eventually. I’m not _happy_ about it, and I’m really not happy you both went on a joyride halfway across the country,” there was a pause so that Flash could look directly at Roy then, and Roy very pointedly did not meet his gaze (hopefully he doesn’t tell the League. They’d never accept him if they hear he let Kid Flash get hurt) before moving back to his trainee. “but I’m glad you both made it out okay.”

There were a few moments of hugging it out, made sort of complicated by Wally’s busted ribs and fingers, but with a speedster’s healing factor, he would be back to hugging it out without any complications within a week or two, max.

“And the kid?” Flash asked after pulling back from the hug.

Wally blanched, whipped his head around, and stared at Roy. Roy made a face and shrugged helplessly. Flash said, “Oh no.”

“No, no,” Wally said, “Uh. It’s not that we failed to save the kid, it’s uh.”

“’Uh?’”

“Uh..”

“We failed to save the guy the kid was torturing,” Roy said, deciding it was probably better to just get it out as bluntly as possible. “The mobsters Wally had been trailing did that. And distracted the kid long enough I could run in and drag Wally out of there before any more fingers got broken.”

The look of horror on the Flash’s face as he held his trainee was really… it wasn’t too much for Roy. But he would have rather not seen it. So he closed his eyes, kept his arms crossed in front of him, and purposefully did not wonder about father figures.

“I lost track of the kid in the gunfire, but he wasn’t running away,” he said, and despite everything, he had to be sort of sorry. “I’m… not sure if he made it out.”

He heard Flash moving, but even if his eyes had been open, he probably wouldn’t have been able to duck away in time from the arm that hauled him down to the hospital bed.

“Augh!”

“Stop squirming, Wally’s hurt.” And Roy wasn’t, so there really was no reason for being dragged into a group hug. It was another few seconds before he surrendered entirely, resigning himself to being involved in whatever this was, with one of Flash’s arms over his shoulder and the other arm over Wally’s. “It sounds like you both went through a lot tonight. I’m still not happy about how it happened, but I’m getting the feeling you both have been though enough. So even though I’m gonna want a more detailed _everything_ when we get home—we’re getting home, first. I’ll get you both signed out. Let Greenie and Wally’s parents know you’re both okay.”

Roy groaned. “Do we have to tell him?”

Flash laughed a bit at that, and it helped, some. “Sorry, dude. Gotta tell him. You’re just five months out of critical condition, yourself, and I’m not about to hold out on him about your wellbeing at this point. But if you decide want to spend the night with us instead of going back to Star City?—that’s another thing entirely.”

And Roy grinned, just a little.

With how awful the night had turned, crashing on the Allen’s couch didn’t sound half bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things 
> 
> 1) This fic now has a blog! http://criminalbatfam.tumblr.com/  
> Follow for snippets, discussion, and my slow descent into DCU hell
> 
> 2) I’m still sort of feeling out how I want this fic to tell itself, and right now it’s leaning more towards abstract emotion and weird chronology, so I’m running with that for now. Wally, Roy, and Dick’s first meeting didn’t go too well, but there’s loads of other characters available. Please me know if there are any interactions you’re interested in seeing.
> 
> 3) In a review, leave a witty quip, and I’ll see if I can work it into the story!
> 
> I’m super psyched about the response this story has gotten. Thank you everyone, especially those of you who commented! They are extremely appreciated, advice and critique are still welcome. Thank you again


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m operating on four hours of sleep so please be gentle and also there’s a bunch of food-talk in this and upcoming chapters I think

Jason hadn’t ever been given bodyguard duty before.

He’d been _fighting_ to get it—as weird as that sounded, even as weird as it was to just _think_ it—he’d been fighting for bodyguard duty. Because Nightwing always got bodyguard duty, and at a certain point it just got irritating that Nightwing basically hung around Bruce twenty-four/seven.

Hypothetically, Robin would get bodyguard duty. Maybe that had only been when Dick was Robin, but the premise had still stuck to the name rather than the person. Now, there were two Robins, both hardly getting their feet under them and only a handful of weeks into the position: one of them flinched every time he was visible and the other couldn’t sit still with a straight face for more than an hour.

And since it wasn’t like Bruce actually _needed_ a bodyguard: be visible, be still, be intimidating? That was the whole schtick.

Flinching and not being able to sit still did not make ht schtick work. Flinching and not being able to sit still would not make anyone feel like the Bat wasn’t the only one they had to worry about, _or_ put people at false-ease by giving the impression the Bat still had to hire people.

Sure, maybe only the new ones really thought Bruce actually needed to hire anyone, because Cananies didn’t really count—and bodyguard duty was the art of making people unnerved or relaxed based on a smile.

Admittedly, Nightwing was pretty good at that, and Jason hadn’t been that good at the ‘at ease’ thing, even before he decided putting a uncanny-valley level deathtrap around his head was a good idea.

As pissed as Jason was about no longer being Robin, he had to admit he was pretty okay with hiding his face. Protecting it. The helmet was good for protection. No one was gonna punch him in the face too effectively with his Hood up. Which was always preferable, since he’d had a lifetime too much of being punched in the face. Both after and before being homeless for those three years of complete bullshit.

But this was the bottom line:

Bodyguard duty required you stand behind Bruce, look scary as fuck or comparatively pleasant, and beat the shit out of someone if it came down to it.

And compared to the Batman, Jason was _very_ pleasant. So he basically fit every qualification. But when it all came down to it? Nightwing was always the bodyguard.

Jason had done it some in small stints during his two years as Robin. Stood behind Bruce during a confrontation. Crack a joke, maybe. But most of the time it ended in fists, because they’d _planned_ for it to end in fists, so it wasn’t really bodyguarding, and half the time Nightwing showed up anyway, so—

It really shouldn’t have irritated him nearly as much as it did. But considering everything, considering he was _always_ second toadie to Nightwing—he wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t bother him. He could’ve definitely hidden it, if it weren’t for the addition of the two new Robins after the whole—after that—he really didn’t want to think about it.

He really didn’t want to think about how they’d met the two new Robins.

It was embarrassing, and he was never going to think of it ever again. There. Done. Final. Never again. It was resolved.

But goddamnit, he was still kind of bitter.

 

He still kind of felt like a shit for it all. And it was stupid, because there was no reason, and it was dumb, and Bruce had said leaving the mantle of Robin was supposed to be a reward so he could personalize himself more; he was given permission to carry guns after that one freakout, and he kept being told he’d made up for the fuckup that had brought two new Robins to attention, but—

But for all that trust, he wasn’t allowed to stand beside Batman in the light the same way Nightwing could.

(Not even broaching the whole of _Dick Grayson, son of Bruce Wayne, Gray Son of Gotham who-wasn’t-even-born-here._ )

And it really should not have pissed him off, but here he was in the manor basement—one story above the Cave, more of a bunker than anything. Cold War era, Bruce said—in his bunk, listening to their two runaway Robins play AC/DC in the room next to him, and wondering if anyone had gone grocery shopping in a while.

He wasn’t being petty. It was just apparently a lot easier for someone missing-and-presumed-dead for the last six years to go grocery shopping than the ward of a billionaire.

Little victories.

Not like anyone else in this house remembered they needed to eat regularly.

It was afternoon. The clock on the wall told him so, even though there weren’t any windows for him to verify it with. The basement rooms weren’t bare by any stretch, but windows were something you had to go topside for, and since Bruce Wayne was only supposed to have one kid? They usually did a perimeter check before going topside. He didn’t have to go topside in the Manor to get to the grocer.

Yeah, a package of basic foodstuff was delivered to the manor gates on a weekly basis, as dictated by some order system Bruce had set up with a wholesaler. Yeah, if the Robins could escape from restraints in an acceptable amount of time or someone decided it was time to up their toxins resistance, they ordered pizza, or shitty Chinese, or Indian, or whatever take-out-order-out place they hadn’t gotten in a while, or whatever the most successful kid of the day requested.

Jason was still gonna go grocery shopping. Or whatever half-baked alternative he could find for it.

Maybe it’d get him out of his head.

He left his room (bed made, laundry folded and in dresser, clean corners, books and paper goddamn everywhere) in street clothes, with a gun holstered under his jacket, knife in boot, a fake concealed-carry license that would hold up long enough for a cop to get paid off, and a debit card. Keys. Sunglasses. List. No list. Burner phone #37. Empty bag with straps.

He left the basement level and headed lower, into the Cave, then three sublevels lower than that, until he hit the tunnel system and ‘garage’ area. Multiple motorcycles. One car. (One _Batmobile_. Nightwing had named it when he was a nine year old. Previously, it had just been a car.) One massive metal door between him and the entrance to the tunnel system.

He took one of the ‘urban camo’ motorcycles, one of the ones that distinctly looked like it didn’t belong anywhere near the Wayne Mansion. The kind that might be able to head into Crime Alley without getting jacked. Low profile in case he wanted to take it topside. He would. No point carrying his food through a sewer.

He mounted the motorcycle, set the door to open for fifteen seconds, and went.

Gotham was a city of tunnels.

Old, old sewers the size of walkways. Subway systems, many out of use, most overcrowded. Natural caves filled with pools of saltwater and calcium. Unnatural labyrinths of mortar and lime.

She wasn’t the only city of tunnels. Not by far: the Parisian catacombs stretched for miles, with a mere fraction open to the public for tours. The majority of the catacombs weren’t even mapped, were considered extremely dangerous, were easy to become lost in. Whole secret societies—not all inherently malicious—lived in the Parisian catacombs. Lost corpses turned up inside them. Hidden entrances and blocked off passages littered the city, half forgotten with age and history.

And Paris was, for all its light and bluster, a comparatively small city.

Gotham was much larger than Paris.

Perhaps Gotham’s tunnels had seen fewer total bodies, but its blood ran freshest. Its shadows lingered longest. And the Bat knew each and every one of them.

The Batcave was the largest and best outfitted of their lairs, but was situated outside the city. The commute was killer.

Most of the worknight was spent in the second auxiliary Cave—another underground bunker hidden in one of the subway system’s ghost lines. The Canaries knew that one. Fully functioning, fully operational, fully capable of being worked from, but it wasn’t where their harddrive space was stored and, ultimately, it was disposable.

Jason had spent his first six months huddled under a blanket with an IV in his arm at an even smaller, even newer cave, in the sewers near the Bowery.

What every tunnel shared was being a bitch to navigate, and, for ‘security purposes,’ Bruce refused to add in a GPS navigation system for them on any of their phones or bikes.

So Jason was taking the old fashioned way, and surfaced out of the Batcave tunnel about six miles southeast of Wayne Manor. He took the Robert Kane Memorial Bridge into Gotham. The streets and overpass from there took him almost right on top of Crime Alley, which was trying its damndest to be a food desert and therefore not really giving him any good excuses to swing through unless he just wanted to call attention to himself, shitty-looking bike or no shitty-looking bike.

The commute to Gotham was as much of a bitch as her tunnels, and there was honestly no way getting groceries in person really justified it, especially when he knew very well that a delivery of staple supplies was slotted for the next day or so.

He pushed the bike a bit further over the speed limit and made towards Central Gotham.

He was already way more than halfway there, and even though his head was still rolling some, it was still better to keep going than turn back empty handed and let himself stew in that the rest of the day.

Of course, Burner Phone #37 rang not long after he’d made it there and gotten back on his feet.

“Hey,” he said, snapping it up to his ear without bothering to look at the ID. He assumed Dick. It was not Dick.

“Jason,” Bruce said on the other end.

“Oh, hey,” Jason said, a little cautious, but there was nothing in Bruce’s tone of voice that suggested something more horrible than usual was going on. Jason fidgeted with his empty bag and waited by the bike just a bit longer. Never hurt to make sure there wasn’t a fire. “What’s up?”

“You’re not in the Manor. Did something come up?”

Okay, nothing horrible. Check ins. Jason readjusted the bag, secured the bike where he parked it, and started to walk. “Just getting fresh air. Why? Miss me already?”

“Stop that,” Bruce said. Jason grinned. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Course you did,” he said, still grinning. “Something we can talk about on the phone? I kinda just got downtown and I don’t wanna waste the trip.”

There was a pause on the other line while Bruce debated a debrief over the phone, but eventually seemed to get over it—sometimes practicality won out over his paranoia; it was usually a matter of exactly how many hours of sleep he’d had the night before—and while he debated, Jason made his way out onto the street. There was a corner mart nearby he liked sometimes. Good place to start bullshit errands. Not big enough to be freaky. Only one security camera. No audio feed.

“The phone will be fine,” Bruce said, finally, sounding a little like he’d swallowed his tongue just trying to say it. So, at least a couple hours of sleep. Huh.

“Cool. So, what’s up?” The corner market was in his sights. Small, but good location. Moderately crowded for its size, but nothing compared to the crowd of the street. He’d watch his words.

“I’m going to need you tonight.”

“Yeah? What doing?” he headed inside and picking up a basket by the door.

“I have a business meeting I’d like you to attend.”

Jason paused midway past the cold drinks section by the far wall. “Wait.”

“It will be a late night so I want you back here and resting beforehand. Yes?”

“Attend a meeting. With you? Like how what’s-his-face usually does?”

“Yes.”

Jason did not punch the air but he did bite the inside of his lip because fucking _finally_ , but also—“Is the D-bag sick or something?”

“Don’t call him that. And no. But he isn’t fond of our planned location, and I would rather not have him emotionally compromised.”

Gone from the cereal isle. This required junk food.

(He paused at the head of the isle filled with candy and snack bars, and hesitated, because despite the warmth in his gut it was way too easy for a gnawing anxiousness to work its way into his shoulders. He rolled them back and ignored it. Dumb old habits died harder than anything else he’d ever tried to put down.)

“He doesn’t like the _place_?”

“He doesn’t like the owner. He was—friendly with some of Dick’s old rivals. I don’t want those sorts of personal vindettas tonight.”

“So you picked me,” Jason said, eyebrows going up.

“Do you have any personal vindettas against anyone I don’t already know about?”

“Eh,” Jason said, shuffling a bit further into the isle and nudging a low-row box with the toe of his boot. “Maybe the Michelin Man. He always kinda freaked me out.”

“I will keep that in mind, then,” Bruce said in the tone that meant he hadn’t _laughed_ but his lip had probably twitched upwards, which was basically just as good from such a quiet guy.

“And if the Michelin Guy shows up to this meeting, I am bugging out first and asking questions later.”

“Understood.”

He’d relaxed a bit, but it really was getting kind of pathetic how long it was taking him to pick out something. Even if he was concentrating mostly on the phone conversation. “So can I know who it is we’re gonna go see? Or is it some kinda surprise?”

“I would rather tell you that part in person, when you get back. You’ll receive the rest of the details then, as well.”

“Fine, whatever,” Jason said, nodding to himself, huffing a bit and crouching down in the isle. He reached out to finally pick up a packet of mini doughnuts. Hesitated. ( _Man, don’t freak out, you’re spending a billionaire’s money. It’s fine_.) “But why d'we care about this guy?”

He expected to be told that would also be in the debrief, but apparently, Bruce was either far more sleep deprived or far more put-together than he’d imagined, because there was only a short pause of hesitation before, “Mostly because he claims to be over fifty thousand years old, and functionally immortal.”

Jason’s hand froze overtop the packet. Something like adrenaline surged through him and lit him up from the inside.

“That,” he said, “Okay. That _does_ sound pretty interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /quietly places a new warning that this plot will involve a character death. A non-Jason character death. Like. Just so we’re clear. It’ll be a long while yet. I do promise it is not Wally, though. Scout’s honor. I was only a brownie for a few months but it still counts, right?


	4. Chapter 4

The first time Jason dressed as Robin, it was for protection.

It was hard to sneak up on a Bat, harder still to do so at one of their hideouts, and almost impossible to implement a successful attack against one. Therefore, the attack failed.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t a danger. Especially when the Bat himself wasn’t actually around to be attacked.

Just one bird, and one gutter rat.

“It won’t stop anything high-caliber or at close range, and it won’t stop you from getting broken ribs, so whatever you do, _don’t get shot_.”

With that, Robin stripped off his red kevlar vest and shoved it into Jason’s arms before fumblingly removing the IV that had lived in Jason’s hand since he first regained consciousness. Then came a moment-long crash course on how to put on the hip and shin guards—along with a hiss of, ‘ _make sure they_ _cover your arteries_.’ The arm guards were more instinctive. The boots and gloves, Robin kept. The belt never left his waist. The cape only attached properly to the vest and without being used to it, it would be more of a hinderence than an asset, so Robin set it aside once the final clasps and buckle were attached. Jason wavered under the heavy, unfamiliar weight of the armor, before staggering after him through the underground lab.

Robin didn’t tell him to run or hide—there weren’t many places _to_ hide or take cover in the lab; it was a big empty space with tables, cabinets and what had been his bed. Not exactly bullet proof. With nowhere to take cover that wouldn’t be immediately obvious and soon after, dangerous, Robin just let him trail along, and grinned when Jason asked, “What about you?”

“Between the two of us?” Robin paused just long enough to pull an adhesive mask out of one of his many pockets and slap it over Jason’s face. Crooked. No time to reapply. “Somehow, I think you’re the one more vulnerable to dying horribly right now. I’ll be _fine_. Besides, worst comes to worst? They’ll totally buy that you’re actually Robin and leave me the hell alone. Don’t tell Batman I cursed.”

And oh, fuck, Jason was half convinced Robin was about to leave him high and dry in a hidden lab in the Gotham sewers to die at the hands of people he’d never personally pissed off.

“Stop making that face, I was kidding,” Robin snickered as Jason froze in place. “Batman wants you alive. As long as I’m here, you’re getting out of this.”

Anything Jason could have said in response was interrupted when another loud clang sounded against the metal door, followed by a groan. The third sound of its kind in the last minute. The initial warning alert had come not long before then. This time, the door finally gave.

Robin lifted an arm and kicked his feet off the ground like a goddamn bird, and suddenly, all the rumors were true—Robin really _could_ fly. Could turn invisible.

He vanished into the shadows, only to reappear on top of the first thug to pass through the death trap that was the front doorstep.

The first guy dropped. The one coming in right behind him fared about as well.

Between the security measures outside—what they were exactly, Jason had no clue, he’d been basically a zombie when he’d stumbled through them himself—and Robin’s quick, efficient take-downs, it almost felt like the lab was impenetrable.

Of course, that changed when the goons started shooting throughthe mangled doorframe, rather than passing through it personally. With a sound like a yelp or a hack, Robin leapt backwards and took to the shadowy support beams once more, laughing as he flew—barely visible—from one beam to the next. His laughter and the attention he drew meant even when five goons with guns made it through the lab door, it took a good few seconds for any of them to notice Jason.

When one finally did, the gun turned faster than the rest of the body.

Jason hadn’t actually ever _fought_ someone with a gun before, he reflected. He mostly ran from them. But he saw where the gun was pointing. His gut told him where the bullet would end up. When his gut told him to crouch and sprint, he wasn’t arguing with it.

He hadn’t really stopped to plan out charging the thug who’d spotted him, or grabbing the gun over top of the guy’s wrist and twisting downward until the grip loosened. He definitely didn’t consciously think of using the downward twist of momentum to drop his opposite elbow into the guy’s jaw, whip the gun up on the follow-through, and hold the other goons at point-blank gunpoint.

It was more a series of _oh, this is an option_ and then taking it. What he would have done next, he wasn’t sure, because that was about when a batarang came flying out of left field, knocking the gun right out of his hands, followed by a puberty-cracked shout of, “ _Not in my suit!_ ”

And then the little black shadow was snapping someone’s neck by using his whole body as leverage. One of the goons moved into the opening made by the batarang and shoved a knife in Jason’s face. Said something like, ‘ _two?_ ’. Jason bit the hand.

He was dragged out to the sewer walkway by his hair, away from the rafters and the small monster that hid in them. There were fewer thugs on the other side of the door than he’d thought there’d be. Or perhaps whatever traps were in the sewers took out the numbers he’d been imagining. When they tried to drop him into the waterway, he twisted again in that instinctive way, pivoted, then, _oh, that’s an option,_ before headbutting the one who’d dragged him in the stomach. The grip on his hair released and the bastard holding him fell backwards into the sludge, breathless. Jason followed him down, lunging.

There were others— _more_ —being forced out of the lab by a cackling form. The sewers were rank, an overpowering stench of waste and water that hadn’t permeated the lab. The stones were cold, wet, slick under his feet. He stayed away from the thick of it, focused on keeping down the struggling man he’d landed on.

He didn’t black out, but it was a blur. It was all a huge blur of thrashing and broken knuckles and gunshots before Jason stilled on top of one of the one he’d knocked the wind out of, ears ringing and adrenaline waking him up fully for the first time in days. His fist halted mid-piston after what felt like only a few rapid, frantic seconds of scrambling fists.

“Are you going to finish him?”

Jason jolted. Turned, shaking and panting (three days before, he’d been _bedridden_ ), to see Robin stretching near the entrance to the lab, a pile of broken bodies around him.

No more gunshots. No more shoes squeaking on the wet stone. A small army of thugs down. An even smaller boy standing among them, wearing no armor but gloves and boots, with something dark and thick oozing off his toes and fingers.

Jason’s hands ached. Knuckles bloody. Stomach as off-kilter as the mask on his face. His knee stayed planted in the gut of the thug beneath him, who still moved, groaning, despite the bloody smear that was their face. The guy’d be ugly for the rest of his life, but if he got to a clinic, then really there probably wouldn’t be anything _too_ bad.

Robin stood by the entrance to the brightly lit lab, his arms loose at his sides, mask firmly on, and said, “Are you going to finish him, or do I have to?”

Finally, Jason had to voice to say, “What?” before his brain caught up with him, before the stories of what Batman and Robin _did_ caught up to the faces of the duo who’d hovered over him for days. The kinds of stories that used to fly around about two shadows in the night, the ones you heard from your friend who-knew-someone-whose-sister-had-a-friend-who-knew-a-Maroni who was found face down in a—

Robin didn’t sneer. Didn’t scowl. He grinned a bit, crossed his arms, and crossed the distance between them. “If you don’t kill him, he’ll come after you. They always do.”

“…’wont,” the man beneath Jason’s knee groaned. “…please… promise, I wo’…”

“If you don’t, I will,” Robin stood just behind Jason’s shoulder. It almost sounded consoling.

“I,” Jason said, looking down at the man whose face he’d just been laying into—but that was just a _beating_. It was just a beating. “I?”

“Then stand back,” Robin said, nodding at him. “Go back into the lab if you want. But if you do it or stay, you _stay._ ”

Jason swallowed. “And if I don’t?”

“Eh,” Robin shrugged. The man on the ground was still pleading. “Then it’s still pretty flexible.”

“’Pretty flexible’?"

“Yeah. Probably the only time you’ll _ever_ be comparatively flexible to me.” Robin paused in looking intimidating to promptly lift his right leg straight in the air and stick his foot behind his head.

Jason laughed—not a pretty sound, not like Robin’s laugh, not even like his bark.

The sound came mostly out of shock, because, because Robin was just talking about _killing_ a person pleading for their life, and now he was just? With his leg? It was freaky looking? “I, hah, uh? So you’re not gonna, I dunno, say you’ll kill me unless I kill him and pledge myself to the murder cult?”

Robin’s foot stayed hooked behind his head. It looked painful, but Robin kept it there and shrugged.

“Neither of us is really into the whole forcing-people-to-be-murderers thing. I mean, you know how the police have a quota to meet? We have a cap limit. Of bodies. I’m only allowed to dispose of a certain number of people per job, minus extenuating circumstances, like—“ he paused to gesture around them, “—ambushes. You know. Safety first.”

“But this guy’s not a threat anymore,” Jason said, not looking at the man beneath him. The chest his knee rested on trembled. The sobs were audible. Apparently he’d gone beyond words. “You’re still gonna drop him?”

Finally, Robin’s lip twisted a bit and the leg came back down to rest on the floor. “I’m not going to ‘ _drop’_ him. I’m just offering you a choice.”

“Is this some kinda _test_?” Jason said, a sudden revulsion rising in him like bile in his throat. He stood, taking his knee off the man’s body and forfeiting any leverage on him to stand up and face Robin— _The_ Robin, who’d just taken out a small mob while Jason had maybe concussed two people out of luck. He was probably even more over his head than he’d ever been before, but Jason stood.

He stood, his bloody hands clenched into fists, and snarled, “Answer me, asshole. What do you want from me? Why were yous helping me? What the fuck really _is_ this?”

“Unfortunately, for once you’re overestimating how far ahead Batman’s planning. He’s not _that_ interested in you,” Robin said, crossing his arms in front of his chest once more, frowning faintly. “I’m offering a choice. You can kill this one and finish what you started, or I will.”

“And if I say no?” Jason said, hating how shrill his voice got. How calm Robin seemed.

“Then you say no,” Robin said, the frown edging into something deeper. “I lock you in the lab until I can contact Batman, and interrogate whoever out here is still alive. Then, before we move to a new location, I get to see if Batman still wants to keep you as his new _pet._ ”

000

Vandal Savage had been in the Iceberg Lounge before.

There were very few places he hadn’t been to before. Admittedly, the locations tended to change substantially between visits, but he had indeed been most everywhere before, and the Iceberg Lounge had not changed much. It hadn’t even been multiple generations since Savage’s last visit, which was a feat in and of itself, but one which had much less to do with the Lounge itself, and much more with the city it served.

Hub City may have been the most corrupt place in the United States, but she was oversaturated. Choking. Gotham _breathed._ Shifted like a many-faced monster. Violence and chaos were her blood, not her poison. The most perfect city of evolution—the two coming towards him now where testament to it.

Both native, or so their survival would imply. Most of those in the Iceberg Lounge had found their start in Gotham somewhere. Some had roots which stretched back long enough that Savage bothered to remember the family names. Most passed like mayflies. The two masks coming towards him had done admirably to survive thus far, but ultimately, it would only be a matter of time before they perished and took their names with them, leaving a newer, greater generation to follow.

If Gotham were cut off from the outside and allowed to feed on herself for a time, he could only image the creatures which would emerge from the rubble.

The Bat went unnoticed. The front of the Lounge was not, precisely, _disguised_ as a typical modern nightclub, but it was far more lively than the back rooms. A well-known and perfectly legal meeting place for criminals and villains to mingle in the strangest and filthiest way Savage ever had the displeasure of viewing. For the prices it cost to get in, one would have thought the rabble would at least have filtered themselves, but of course, they would never be so convenient. Still, one inevitably had to go through the front in order to reach the backrooms—the ones reserved for meetings, such as the one Savage had arranged. Back room prices were higher. The price was determined based on the number of (living) bodies, possibly a tactic to prevent a gang war from breaking out in the backrooms, or, if the greed of man was to be believed, to profit off it, even if a gang war did break out.

As it was, Savage had paid the Bat’s way—a courtesy, as the host. Batman himself had paid for the spare.

The guard was much more conspicuous than his master, who Savage only fully regarded as having entered the blue-lit backroom once the guard closed the door behind them with a click, and the roar of the front lounge lessened.

A new face. Or, a new mask, perhaps. He came casually and quickly, and settled behind his master’s left shoulder with a bored slouch, glancing slowly this way and that, from the wet bar in the corner, to the statuettes in the corners, up to the painted ceiling and back down to the broad wooden table in the center.

“It’s good you’ve come,” Savage said, smiling and gesturing to the haigh-backed chair across from him. “Please.”

He sat, if slowly. Even sitting, the cloak covered most of him. Savage offered the wine already on the table. The Bat refused.

“Come now, it’s business, mix in a little pleasure,” Savage said, smiling a bit as he topped his glass off.

“I don’t drink,” said the Bat.

“More’s the pity,” Savage said, and drank.

“You said you had a business venture I might be interested in,” Batman said, as stiff and still as he had been since revealing himself. “That someone who knew me had pointed you in my direction."

“Is that a problem?”

“Very few people know me,” Batman said.

“I hope it’s not the only reason you agreed to come. From what I’ve been told, you may have an interest—though, I suppose _most_ people would enjoy having a seat at the table of a changed world.”

The Batman’s did not flicker so much as tense minutely. His guard, on the other hand, shifted his weight from one hip to the other. It was difficult to tell if the motion were one of nervousness or boredom.

Either way, the movement almost distracted from the subtle shift in the Batman’s visible face. Fine timing.

“A changed world,” the Batman said, sounding just slightly intrigued. Enough of an indication, from someone so reserved.

So Savage told him of the Light.

000

There were gaps in the plan.

 _Of course there were gaps in the plan,_ Tim Drake rationalized. _They don’t know if Batman will actually want in or not._

(Neither did Tim. It was expected—he’d only known the Bat a short time—but still. He wanted to know.)

It would be stupid of Savage to reveal his whole plan to someone if he weren’t completely certain they would want in. But it also seemed sort of stupid to have such a massive gathering of villains for a long-term plan when it didn’t sound like they had much in the way of a chain of command, or anything really holding them together besides a nebulous common goal? Maybe there was something Tim was missing. Honor among criminals?

 _Batman sort of has that_ , Tim thought. (He’d had enough of it when he found Tim and Steph standing in that backlot with a boy in a mask bleeding on the ground, he didn’t kill them immediately. He waited long enough to say, “ _Explain_.” ) Maybe Savage was recruiting that sort of ally?

It wasn’t enough of a theory to bet on. His theory was even less of a theory than the plan Savage laid out was a full plan. At least with Savage’s plan, Tim could see the gaps, he could guess where Batman was filling in blanks, even if Tim didn’t know enough to do the same. Comparably, Tim’s honor-among-criminals theory would need less filling-in of gaps and more filling-of-a-mote.

He had a few too many blanks and questions to really be considered a Robin.

 _A_ Robin, because now the horrible cackling shadow of Gotham city was _definitely_ plural, and—and Tim knew before anyone else. Tim _was_ —

Tim was—

Tim was spotted.

He flinched when Batman looked at him, even as something like joy curled in his chest.

 _He sees me_.

Admittedly, he should not have seen Tim. Admittedly, Tim should not have been hiding in the space-between-floors of the Iceberg Lounge, peering up at a private meeting though a floor vent.

He was still sort of excited that Batman saw him.

Batman would be okay with his hiding, probably. Tim hadn’t been _told_ to be there, no, but the Batman understood that Tim understood that he knew far, far too little about Gotham’s underworld to effectively be the sort of person that Robin was. He didn’t know it intimately, like Steph or Jason did, and he hadn’t personally terrorized it for half a decade like Dick, he was just—Tim. Outsider. Looking in on the streets of a city he’d been born in but hadn’t really _walked_ until recently. There was a huge gap between them, between their knowledge bases, between their _skillsets_ , and Tim—

He had to make it up.

Batman didn’t blow his cover. He’d hardly even looked away from Savage in the first place, and though Tim couldn’t see more of Savage than his hand with the angle of the grate, it was still enough for him to know Savage either didn’t care about Batman’s wandering gaze or hadn’t noticed it at all.

(That was another thing Tim had to practice. He’d only recently been able to figure out where Batman was looking when he was beneath the cowl. He’d originally thought it was impossible, that the lenses of the mask were intended to make it impossible, before he’d seen both former Robins tell Batman to stop rolling his eyes, and then, then Tim figured out the _pattern_ to it, because Batman’s tells were _tiny_ but they were real, couldn’t be trained out entirely, but if you weren’t studying them, waiting for them, then—)

The meters in Tim’s hand shifted silently. Batman asked Savage, “And you came to me with this, because?”

“Should I have not?”

“In Gotham alone, there are plenty of criminals who would more than happily jump at this.. plan you’ve got, here. Pamela Isley, for one. Cobblepot would happily work under a contract. Though I suppose with Luthor on your side, you wouldn’t need Cobblepot’s funds. Still, you’ve passed up quite a few bigger names to find me.”

Luthor… hadn’t been mentioned. Tim fidgeted, and bit down on his finger knuckle a moment later to try and stop it. Train out your tells.

When Savage spoke, it sounded like he was smiling.

“The best of us can keep our heads down when we want to. You have been… quiet. There are rumors, of course, of you and your,” Savage paused, “birds, but of course, rumors are most of what it amounts to. Unconfirmed metahuman or supernatural powers, a rivalry with the Joker, stolen technology, and uncertain territory.”

Tim bit back a smile. When he finally removed his knuckle from his mouth, there were teeth marks on his glove.

“All of Gotham is my territory.”

Savage laughed. “Indeed, whether they know it or not, I see. But most of them don’t know it. And wouldn’t it be assumed that the head of a criminal organization who dresses up as a bat is someone trying to attract attention? It certainly works for the clowns.”

“Just because most people assume doesn’t make it true.”

“Argumentum ad populum,” Savage said, and apparently sighing. There was another pause, and it sounded like he was sipping his wine again. Tim made another mental note to start studying Latin. Or. He assumed what Savage said had been Latin. “True. But between your ability to stay hidden and the insistence of our ally, we have decided to extend an invitation. He was… adamant we make the attempt.”

“Tell Ra’s I have no interest in working with him again,” Batman said. The scrape of a chair. Batman stood. “Nor any interest in working with you. Your plans leave too much to uncertainty. I won’t interfere, so long as you keep out of my city.”

That was Tim’s cue to scram. He could still hear them talking, faintly, as he shimmied backwards in the vents. The cape caught momentarily—he was still unused to it, though Nightwing promised him it had its uses, especially while he was still learning—

(Stephanie was already _so_ much more capable with the cape than Tim was, and he’d logged _way_ more hours as Robin than she had so far.)

By the time he wiggled his way free of the vent, most of his later struggles muffled by the front area’s music, Batman and Red Hood had already left the building. It didn’t take any spying or clever timing to figure that out. He knew it instantly, because the moment he emerged from his entrance-vent on the roof, Red Hood grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him into the air.

“You’re _kidding_ , Boss,” Red Hood said, the red helmet’s eye slits staring him down. “What, I can’t be told there’s others there until the end or something?”

“I didn’t tell him to be there,” Batman said, sweeping up behind Hood without a sound. Tim swallowed. He hadn’t been _told_ to stay in the cave that night. “But since he was, I’m sure he had a reason. Put him down before you choke him.”

Hood scoffed, but released Tim’s collar—which hadn’t really been choking him much at all. He dropped fast and hard. The distance was too short to roll like Nightwing had shown him, so he tried to stick the landing and absorb the blow like a spring. He ending up on his ass.

“Robin,” Batman said, crossing his arms and letting the cape fall in front of him, turning him into a dark pillar against Gotham’s night.

“I overheard the briefing,” Tim said, fidgeting just a moment before clamping down on the movement, twisting back onto his feet, and snapping into posture. “So I brought some meters and stuff. I was just thinking…”

“Cross reference your data with what Red Hood was able to capture,” Batman said. “If his ‘immortality’ manifests in any measurable manner, I want to know. Once the findings are compiled, we will decide to send them to Freeze or not.”

“Freeze?” Tim said. He’d been going through the files the Bat had on people alphabetically, and hadn’t reached ‘F’ yet, if he were even allowed access to it. He shot a helpless glance at Red Hood, whose helmet looked on pitilessly.

“You’ll be briefed later. It hasn’t been paramount, lately,” Batman said. “For now, I want you in the Bowery Roost. Red Hood knows the way. Nightwing will be by.”

Red Hood snorted. “Once his date is over.”

Batman didn’t say anything to that, but he did turn and look side-eyed at Red Hood for a long three seconds until the other held up his hands in surrender. Batman continued on as if he hadn’t ever stopped.

“Nightwing is to be back in the Batcave by three. Drag him there if you have to. The two of you will be back no later than five. Robin will hand off the mantle to his counterpart. You’re benched until further notice.”

Tim cringed. “Right. I’m sorry. I was just trying to—”

“—Those were the conditions you agreed to. No exceptions,” the Bat said, twisting to look at him once again. “If you want to return to Robin, wait until your counterpart gets benched. In the meantime, be glad I’m letting you finish out the night.”

Batman wasn’t trying to be frightening, not right then, but the way he frowned or scowled screamed _disappointment_ , and it was honestly worse than when Tim had been frightenedof the Bat.

“I’m really not sure how to feel that being banned from being criminal scumbags is a punishment, now,” Red Hood said. His back was to them now (and he was at ease with his back to Batman, his shoulders relaxed and a hand in his pocket) scanning the rooftops with a lazy turn of his head. “I mean, maybe it’s just me.”

“You and Nightwing treated being benched like the end of the world,” Batman said, not turning to look at Hood as he spoke.

“You said that in the past tense,” Tim said before he could stop himself.

Batman’s face remained impassable. “You’re right. They still do.”

“Hey!”

Hood’s glare hit on Batman, but settled on Tim. It took a low rumble from Batman’s throat and a “Personal problems are left in the Caves. Remember your time constraints,” before the glare dissipated and Hood turned away again.

“Right,” Hood said, huffing. He pulled his hand from his pocket and retrieved the grapple from somewhere in the depths of his coat. “Move it, Replacement. Try to keep up.”

Batman was already off the roof and lost in the night as Hood took aim. Tim fell into step beside him. He took a breath, mentally double checked his stance and aim, and sounded more confident than he felt. “No problem.”

Hood shot off first, and fell into the night.

Following a vaguely-camouflaged figure flying around skyscrapers while going a similar speed was no mean feat, but it was a lot more feasible now than it had been during his first week, now that Tim knew where to look for the former Robins: Nightwing would keep in the air as long as possible, but Red Hood liked having something solid under his feet.

Tim fired off his grapple. He made sure it caught securely before taking a steadying breath and leaping after his predecessor.

(Nightwing was usually either off the ground or off the building entirely before he even fired off a grapple, and would freefall for an instant before catching himself. Red Hood would fire off the grapple while still on solid ground, but wouldn’t stop moving and usually sort of _slid_ into the descent. Tim had never seen Batman fire off a grapple or get into the initial downswing. Even when he remembered to look, he’d only seen the Bat mid-flight.)

After the initial swing, which threw them across a few lanes of traffic and onto the parapet of a distant building, Red Hood rescinded his de-cel line and took off running. Tim landed successfully, but took a moment to be sure of his footing. By then, Hood had already turned the first corner without ever looking concerned he might fall.

Tim wasn’t familiar enough with Gotham yet, didn’t know where all the entrances to the Roosts and Caves were—not well enough to risk straying far from Hood, who supposedly could cross the whole of Gotham on foot in an hour if he wanted. Tim raced to the building’s corner and spotted him already most of the way towards the next jump.

Wasting another moment and against his better judgment, Tim looked down, over the ledge of the building. It was a steep drop to the lights and traffic below, despite this ledge being on a relatively low floor of the building. It had rained recently. The concrete was still damp. The wind blew towards him.

At least he could use the wind to some advantage.

(Batman needed to invest in jetpacks.)

He hoisted the grapple again, aimed as high as he dared with the ledge so close under his feet, and shot.

The wind tunneled between him and the building, letting him swing wide across its perimeter and catch up to Hood much more quickly. It was harder to follow exactly with such a speed difference, but it made good practice, and the few moments of disorientation Tim experienced whenever he made a successful landing were easily made up with another successful shot. As long as he didn’t wind up dangling off the side of the building again after getting clothes-lined by a gargoyle or ( _so dead_ ) a phone wire, he was satisfied with the stilted way he kept up with the other.

Finally, after a horribly long five minutes, Red Hood dropped out of his sight entirely.

It took Tim a moment to land (his back and shoulders and legs were aching by now, but it was better than it would have been had Nightwing not taught him how to roll. It was all up to field practice now, Tim told himself. Field practice, and training while he was benched. He’d get better.) and a moment longer to look around and realize he couldn’t see a glint of red metal anywhere.

He ran across the building in the direction he’d last seen Red Hood go, and grappled down.

“Don’t rely on that thing so much,” Red Hood said, crouched in an alley on the south side of the Crime Alley area, already hauling a sewer grate out of the ground and setting it aside with a quiet _clunk_. “Weenis."

“How _old_ are you?” Tim said, releasing the grapple and landing beside Hood in the alley, (“ _I’m fifteen, now shut up and respect your elders._ ”) He shifted a bit as his cape settled again over his shoulders, trying to see if he could make his cape fall over his front, like Batman’s did. It could, but was too short to cover his legs. The effect wasn’t quite the same. He folded the lapels back over his shoulders, instead, displaying the yellow lining, and ignored Red Hood’s muttering about playing babysitter to a fourteen year old. “So, what next?”

“I dunno, Mr. Super-Spy, why don’t you tell me?” Red Hood straightened up and gestured for Tim to go in first. “Mind th’ piranhas.”

Tim looked down at the gaping hole in the alley concrete, took a last deep breath of what little fresh air Gotham could offer him, and plunged into the depths.

He landed in—sewage.

He raced out of it as fast as he could, finding a walkway nearby. It was grimy and slimy and just as disgusting as the rest of his surroundings, but it wasn’t knee-deep, and that was a huge improvement. It also got him far enough away that when Hood came down, he wouldn’t—

Hood swung down and pulled the grate back shut over their heads in one movement, landing on the walkway with practiced ease. At least he didn’t try to push Tim in, this time.

“Shower and clean that shit off before you touch anything in the lab,” Hood said, tapping the side of his helmet to activate his night-vision. Tim did the same with a small button on the side of his mask. The domino just thick enough to have a few functions like alternate lenses and a built-in tracker. It had been bright enough out by the city streets to move without altered vision, but down in this part of the sewers, night vision was all they had.

Hood navigated the sewers easily, not saying a word about the cloying stench or the slippery stones. Tim kept close, trying hard to find some sort of indicators as to where they were or which turns to take. Eventually, he had to admit that even the broken lights scattered graffiti along the walls were hard to keep track of, and he would likely have to memorize the layout of the sewers relative to the streets above.

More things to learn.

They reached the lab not long later. The door was hidden, sunken into the wall and barricaded by trash. There were traps on the way in, but the sort that had to be activated internally. Without anyone inside, the lab was just that—a lab. Not much was really stored inside it. A few laptops, medical supplies, and lab equipment, but nothing else of much worth. An emergency shower-stall that was intended for quick disposal of spilled toxins or sudden incendiaries, but for the moment, got the worst of the sewage off. Anything meaningful found in the lab was promptly relocated at the end of each shift in it, barring the required stash of anti-toxins and anti-venoms. The sudden activation of florescent lights was blinding for a moment, (night vision off, _night vision off_ ) but they hung low from the ceiling, and the rafters above were still steeped in shadow.

Once a bit cleaner, Tim pulled out the meters and measuring tools he’d hidden along the lining and in the pockets of the Robin vest and belt. He set them out on the lab table, turned on one of the laptops, and hooked them in. Beside him, Hood simply removed the red helmet and slid open a panel on the back. Hidden between a mass of heavy padding and wires, a chip slid out. Red Hood’s ‘black box.’ It recorded anything the helmet’s sensors and lenses picked up and was nigh-indestructible, not unlike the black boxes in airplanes.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Tim said as the computer began to process the data. Hood snagged a chair by its back and spun in around to sit in. He pulled out a protein bar—from where, Tim didn’t know. He’d have to practice observation. What a stupid thing to not see, but it could’ve easily been a gun in another situation—

“Proof he’s a normal human,” Hood said, taking a bite of the bar. “And since you were the one who snuck out, you’ve volunteered to do the boring shit. Congrats. Start running the numbers, Replacement.”

Tim huffed but midway thought thinking up a retort, he found himself turned back to the computer screen and doing as he was told.

 _Damnit_ , he thought. Though he didn’t mind looking through data and comparing numbers. It wasn’t something he disliked. “Is there anything _specific_ I’m looking for?”

“Anythin’ weird,” Hood said, leaning back in his chair, but at least when Tim turned to look at him, his eyes were firmly fixed to the laptop’s screen. Whether he could effectively seen from there, Tim wasn’t sure, but it was somewhat beside the point.

“How long do we have until Nightwing comes?” he asked instead, turning back to the screen and starting to sort through the barrage of numbers and stats.

“Hour, hour and a half, depending on if he’s having fun.” Hood finished the protein bar and crumpled the wrapper in his glove. “And when he shows up, I’m ditching. One nerd is enough. Don’t worry, I’ll give Blonde Wonder the good news that she’s back on active.”

Tim tried hard to not let his face twist at that, but failed.

“Hey, your fault,” Hood said. “I gotta say, it _is_ nice having him chew someone else out. For that, I’ll let you stick around.”

“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” Tim mumbled.

Hood snorted and leaned forward, tapping the screen of the computer. “Numbers aren’t matching up. How far away were you from him?” 

“Um,” Tim bit his lip. Quickly released it. “Maybe.. between three and six feet, I guess? I was diagonal…”

“When Nightwing gets here, I’m having him beat you with a measuring tape.”  
  
“What does _that_ mean?”

“It means learn to gauge distance!”

They settled into a silence not long after, Tim looking over the numbers and doing some math, and Jason occasionally leaning over to double check the answers. At some point, another snack bar (Hood did not share or offer to) made an appearance, and they took a quick break to wash again and stare at something other than a computer screen for a while. Finally, three minutes before Hood’s prediction of Nightwing’s ‘had too much fun’ entry time elapsed, Tim worked up the nerve to ask, “Who’s Ra’s?”

“I ain’t doing your homework for you,” Hood said, once again leaned back in his chair and stretching his arms out behind his head.

“I’ve _been_ doing my homework,” Tim said, trying to not keep the snap out of his voice. “I just got through Deathstroke’s file—did he really—?”

“—If it’s in the file, it’s true. So yes. Whatever you’re about to say. He probably did. If it’s about Nightwing, double-yes. All contact between them is officially illegal and should never, ever happen.”

“And Ra’s name was mentioned in his file as a former employer,” Tim said, trying to act like he was still double-checking the numbers on the computer. “I was going to wait on reading his file until I’d worked through the ones in between, but then he was mentioned tonight.”

“Can’t you look this up once we’re home?” Hood said, groaning.

Tim paused. Took a shallow breath. He was being a nuisance. “Right, sorry. I’ll do that.”

Hood groaned again, and Tim wondered what he’d done to warrant _that_ one.

“Ra’s trained Boss before he was Batman. He’s one of the few people in the world who know who know who B and Nightwing really are. Not that it affects us. Bats was set up to take over his organization of ninja assassins before they had a falling-out. Now Ra’s has a weird paternal thing for him and every now and then shows up, saying suggestive stuff about how B should marry his daughter and abandon us ‘cause we’re unworthy.”

“Oh,” Tim said. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem. Walking dictionary, over here,” said Hood.

“Oh, seriously? Sweet. Define, ‘whelmed.’”

Tim jumped and almost slammed the laptop shut, only to find Nightwing sticking his head through the entrance to the sewers.

“Whelmed means, like, overcome. Like, you can be so emotionally whelmed you’re stunned into silence. Which is a state I’d love to see you in more often,” Hood said, scowling from the chair. “Also, what’d I tell you? Hour and a half. Pay up.”

“That is a stupid definition and I reject it,” Nightwing said, stepping fully into the lab and securing the entrance behind him. “Also, you were betting on when I’d show up?”

“No we weren’t,” Tim said before Hood could get Nightwing mad at him, too.

“But we totally should’ve,” Hood added.

Nightwing rolled his eyes so hard he rolled the rest of his head with it, before making his way over to where they sat, knocking Hood’s feet off the table and saying, “Well, aside from disappointing definitions, what’s new? Anything on Savage? Are we gonna dissect him?”

“Wait, dissection was part of the plan?” Tim snapped to face Nightwing, recoiling from the laptop’s screen as he did.

“Dissection was _not_ on the table,” Hood said. “That’s Wingnut thinkin’ he’s funny.”

“Says the guy whose idea of a joke is ‘wingnut,’” Nightwing said, sliding next to Tim and peering at the computer screen himself.

“I wasn’t making a joke, you do that to yourself,” Hood said, snorting. “And the word’s _autopsy_.”

“Anything interesting, Robin?” Nightwing said, smiling at Tim in the pointed way that made him wonder if he’d just stepped into a psychological warzone.

“Uh,” Tim said, not sure if there were any winning moves at this point. He felt Hood glaring daggers into the back of his head, even as Nightwing smiled to his face. At least they were looking at him. “Well. He’s vaguely radioactive. That’s pretty interesting, I think.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized in this chapter that I want to write this like a long-runner, even if that means the buildup and introduction of everyone will take forever. Also:
> 
> If I ever imply I may try writing anything with Savage again, someone threaten to kick me in the balls, because Savage was what stalled this chapter so much. Admittedly? The first scene did not initially exist and went through multiple rewrites, but the Savage scene was rewritten from three different perspectives. Tim Drake Talked For 10+ Pages Before I Cut It. And the batfam’s ever-shifting characters and dynamics are giving me a hernia. It’s really surreal to write Dick being the one trying to convince Jason to kill, and yet that was still probably the easiest portion to write, after I finally figured out that was what I was writing.
> 
> This whole fic will be a mess, and I haven’t even gotten to Damian yet.
> 
> I’m going in vaguely-chronological order minus-Dick, so Stephanie should appear next time. Hopefully Damian will at least get an intro scene very very soon after. Let me know if there’s anyone you want to see or hear from in particular, I have no set-in-stone plans except further-in-the-future ones. Next time, maybe we’ll get an abbreviated history of this universe’s Justice League. Maybe back to the team. Maybe Tim Drake’s backstory/10+ page long internal monologue will finally find a stopping point. Maybe I’ll finally blow up that hospital. Who knows. I sure don’t. The future is an adventure.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an abbreviated history

Three months before Vandal Savage set foot in the Iceberg Lounge, there was a vigilante in Gotham city.

Which was like. _Dude._

_Dude, what were you thinking?_

Really, it wasn’t much, what happened—but the security footage didn’t lie.

It was the bank robbery that really got attention. Everything started out normal enough. Grainy footage, two ski masks with guns busting through the doors, the usual. “Give us the money or we shoot,” stuff.

Then: the doors were kicked in _again_. Four arrows went flying. Two would-be bank robbers were pinned to the wall before the money even hit the floor. A moment later, the vigilante was gone.

After the bank, it was a convenience store, two would-be mugging victims, and a drive-by shooter with a blown out tire and broken fibula.

It was The Question who alerted the League, which should have been a red-alert in and of itself, because The Question wasn’t actually really… a Leaguer. By any stretch of the imagination. The word ‘hero’ was applied there in broad strokes, its definition about as loose as a 20’s gangster’s unbuckled suspenders.

Still, he was probably the only one who would’ve really noticed, considering how the League was usually distracted by things like Wotan trying to block out the sun, or trying to put a background check into Lex Luthor’s new personal assistant. The scary-ass-sock-headed recluse vigilante of Hub City, on the other hand, was known for keeping eyes on basically everything, but the United State’s three big crime cities? _Actually_ his thing.

Hub City was pretty well accepted to be the big cheese of Everything Horrible. Some cities had bad sides. Hub City had _one_ side. A mess of criminal relations that ran so deep, they looped back in on themselves and emerged on the other side with a vague sense of something resembling order. Hub City had a police force where honestcops were actually just slightly less corrupt cops. Hub City had hit its corrupt peak. It was like watching a rotting fruit being engulfed by mold. Eventually, you just had to accept everything was mold, and nothing short of a miracle was going to change it back into fruit.

(It said a lot about whoever The Question was that he took one look at Hub City and made a beeline for it.)

Blüdhaven, the 3rd place runner-up in the Terrible Places On Earth competition, was something of the younger sibling wearing its elder’s cast-offs. An evil pitstop. Gotham’s jetsam caught on its docks: the home of criminals unable to make it in the sister city, and those who preyed upon them. Any fertile ground for criminal growth had already long been eaten up, and now all that was left was to prey on whatever came by. Within the fruit metaphor, things had been rotting for a long time, there wasn’t really much fruit left, and then the mold had turned cannibalistic.

Gotham was fertile ground. She had a good side—or, a good enough side that meant _someone_ kept dropping fruit near the mold and not cleaning it up, so there was always more room for more mold, but it wasn’t ever everywhere all at once. And then, alongside the usual mold, there were mushrooms, lichen, and something small and furry which appeared to be breathing.

Gotham was a weird, ugly mosaic of humanity. Made out of prunes. Also, maybe melons.

There were nice neighborhoods mostly made up of nuclear families, a well-regarded local university complete with funneling highschool, and was famously home to one of the most affluent businessmen in the country, whose worst known scandals involved way more babes than bribes. Of course, that all could’ve been a front. It was Gotham.

Gotham also somehow had crocodiles in the sewers. Gotham had a mob scene collapsing in on its power vacuum. Gotham had a police force that was struggling against corruption, and in the last few years they were notably much less, ‘fire automatics first and asking questions never,’ than they had been, which would have been great, except now there was an urban legend floating around the internet that said one of those automatics had gotten into the hands of a gorilla, who was also a terrorist.

Hub City was a wretched hive. Blüdhaven was a truck stop of terrible. Gotham just seemed to be a factory, churning out the weird and awful as fast as it could.

Really, you never totally knew what was going to come out of Gotham next. So maybe a vigilante shouldn’t have come as a surprise? But it did. And when _someone_ threw a brick through Green Arrow’s window, followed shortly by a brown paper package containing a video tape of a bank robbery, a photograph, and what looked like a letter written on a typewriter?

As little as the League trusted The Question, they trusted that, fundamentally, he wanted to help people. So, they took the name and address provided, sent out a party to see what was what, and decide where to go from there. And in a city like Gotham, who had no one but _maybe_ a few police officers and in-danger-of-assassination public servants, you really needed someone to watch your back.

And that was how Wally West and Roy Harper ended up playing spotter in Gotham, four years after a really bad mob hit went very, very wrong.

How Aqualad ended up squatting with them, Wally was a little less clear on. But he was totally there, about three feet to Kid Flash’s left, blinking up at the storm clouds and breathing slowly in the Gotham smog.

“Dude, do you need, like, a gas mask?” Wally called to the Atlantean. “You sound terrible.”

“Breathing out of water is a strain for many of my people,” Aqualad replied, his voice low and steady as always. It almost disguised his discomfort. “I am fortunate in that regard, as I may stay out of water indefinitely, unlike many of my brethren, though it appears I am still… more susceptible to air quality than I initially believed.”

“Just let us know if you’re about to pass out or something,” Roy said, crouching not far from them with his bow out and arrow loosely notched. Technically, they probably should have been more spread out to keep a better eye on things, but the entrance to the apartment the Crocks called home was very visible from their current vantage of the rooftop across the street.

Flash and Green Arrow had been inside the apartment talking to the vigilante and their family for more than half an hour, so things had gotten boring. They’d been told to maintain radio silence unless a legitimate threat appeared, and Wally was kind of tired of running between Aqualad and Roy to play messenger, so, hey—the logical solution was for them to all move to Roy’s vantage point and steakout together, right? Not like Kid Flash would have trouble getting back on the street if things got dicey.

And Gotham or no Gotham, the front of the Crocks’ apartment building? Currently looking like the least dicey place in the city. Possibly, rumors had spread that Green Arrow and the Flash were hanging around. Gotham wasn’t Green Arrow or Flash stomping ground, so most of the criminals probably figured they’d be up and gone again within a day. Those criminals wouldn’t be wrong. At least it would give the streets a bit of peace for a night, right?

“Please do not be concerned,” Aqualad said. He looked a little embarrassed. Not an expression Wally was used to on Atlanteans. Not that he knew many. “It will not affect my abilities.”

“Well, good, because I’m not covering your ass if you faint on us, gilly,” Roy said. There wasn’t any heat in it. Even if there were, Roy totally would’ve covered Aqualad, fainted or not.

“I would however like to know how much longer this meeting is expected to last,” Aqualad said.

“No idea,” Wally said, sighing into his hands and wrapping his arms around his middle, bouncing on his toes. His Kid Flash uniform really wasn’t suited for Gotham’s climate, and he shivered a bit before crouching down next to Roy, looking over the edge. A long, damp wind blew through the streets. He could try to vibrate his molecules to keep warm, but—no. He’d probably just end up with a bloody nose again, and then he’d have a bloody nose _and_ be too cold. Better to stick it out. “They’d better not take too much longer, though, or I might have to crash the meeting myself. If it starts raining…”

“Shut up, Kid, or it’ll _actually_ start raining. They’re not gonna pull us out because of rain. The only time we want anything _resembling_ rain right now is if some monster shows up and we need Aqualad to kick his ass.”

With Gotham’s typical weather pattern, Wally felt he’d just solved the mystery of why Aqualad had come along on this trip.

“What sort of monsters hide in Gotham?” Aqualad looked down at the two of them, eyes flicking, and probably taking Roy’s comment more literally than intended. What with living underwater, his hometown had probably been assaulted by actual monsters. Sometimes, Wally was glad he lived in Missouri, where the monsters were pretty predictable, usually human, and one-hundred-percent arrestible.

“You name it,” Wally said, shrugging. “Plant people, killer carnival attractions, sentient piles of sludge, mobsters, mobsters that have babies who dress up like neon signs—”

“Ah,” Aqualad said. “I see.”

“Kid’s still bitter he got his ass whooped by a baby mobster dressed like a neon sign,” Roy said, snorting and fiddling with one of the modules on his bow. “Ignore him.”

There wasn’t really anything Aqualad could say to that without being rude either to Kid Flash or Roy, so Wally figured he wasn’t going to say much of anything. Which sucked, because the Flash and Green Arrow had been gone for a while now, and he was exhausted.

Seriously, what kind of talk were they _having_ in there?

A grin slowly broke over Kid Flash’s face as he leaned back on their perch. He turned to Aqualad again. “Hey. You don’t happen to have super-hearing, do you?”

Roy cocked his head to the side and smirked just enough to show he was paying attention and equally hopeful. Aqualad was a little slower on the uptake. That was cool, though. He hadn’t been around speedsters as much as Roy had.

Unfortunately, it turned out Atlanteans did not have super-hearing.

There went that plan right out the window. Wally groaned, gave up, and just lay down on the concrete, staring up at the storm clouds.

“I’m going to die of boredom,” he said.

“Drama queen,” Roy said.

“Coming from you? That’s _rich_ ,” Wally shot back.

“This is not a very… we are supposed to be acting as lookouts,” said Aqualad.

“I would almost rather do my homework,” Wally said, “ _Almost_.”

“Yeah, how’s college searching going for you?” Roy asked, not looking away from the apartment.

“Ugh,” he said, flinging his arms above his head. “I keep telling myself I still have a year to decide for real.”

“You know, the showing-up-late response isn’t going to fly with deadlines.”

“College,” Aqualad said. It was asking for clarification without having to ask for anything. There was probably something like it under the sea, but maybe it had a different name or something. Then again, Atlanteans were all given military training at twelve and had an elite school of ‘magic,’ so maybe colleges weren’t a thing.

“Institute of higher learning dedicated to exposing students to lots of options, giving them tools to travel along a chosen career path, with the intention of preparing them for a field of specialized work,” Wally said. “Also: money vampires. I’m gonna die poor, and alone, and probably hungry.”

Roy sneered. “’Alone’, what are we, chopped liver?”

“If you were, I’d eat you. Don’t test me.”

“Please stop,” Aqualad said, and after huffing one last time at each other, they were nice enough to actually fall quiet. It lasted a good five minutes.

“Man, seriously,” Wally said. “What’s the league want out of this?”

“Kid,” said Roy, twisting towards him, “You should know better than anyone how the League feels about minors trying to fight crime in this city. Why d’you _think_ Flash came along?”

“It’s been years, the kid is probably dead or moved on by now. And it’s _Gotham_. If someone wants to throw their lives away to it, are we really gonna be able to change their mind?”

“We must offer alternatives,” Aqualad said, as if he knew what he was talking about. “Perhaps the vigilante’s actions were also cries for assistance.”

Wally snorted.

“Please,” he said. “The League just doesn’t like anyone fighting crime if they’re under eighteen. Aquaman recruited _you_ , but me and Speedy here had to nag our way in.”

“You nagged, I just told it like it was,” Roy said, rolling his shoulders and neck to work out whatever kink he had in them. “Kid Idiot is right for once, though. The League still treats us like kids. I’ve been real patient, I got it, they want us to prove ourselves—but they’ve been using the same excuse for years. I’m _legal_ now and I’ve been doing this five goddamn years. Kid’s on his fourth. You saved Atlantis—what more so they _want_?”

“I understand your frustrations, but I also see the League’s perspective,” Aqualad said. The only thing that kept Wally from rolling his eyes was that Aqualad also sounded sort of upset, and had been nodding along agreeably to Roy’s huffy explanations. “The current system they have established works well. To change it could cause turmoil.”

Roy snorted, though. “We’re a league of vigilantes that the U.N. and law enforcement look the other way about because they’re too scared. On paper, Kid and me are down as _unpaid_ _interns_.”

“So the League wouldn’t get bit for ‘reckless endangerment of minors,’ or ‘child labor,’ or whatever,” Wally said at Aqualad’s blank look. “I think what he’s getting at is the system could fall on its face at any given time, so we might as well actually _do_ something while it’s here.”

Roy didn’t actually confirm that, but he gave an exasperated grunt that was basically as good as a yes.

Aqualad sighed and shook his head again, finally relaxed his posture some, and moved to sit beside Kid Flash on the edge of the rooftop. His long legs dangled over the edge. Above them, thunder rumbled, signaling an impending cloud break. “I see your points. But what is there for us to do?”

“We can go solo,” Roy said, not looking towards them. “It’d be easy. They’d have to acknowledge us.”

Wally considered that and sat up with a groan. “Yeah, maybe, but we’re not gonna get anything high-profile by going out blind. We could probably snoop through a couple of the League’s shelved missions and go through them. If we do anything they’re already thinking about, the League will just get on our asses about it and try to handle it themselves, but if we do something they’ve forgotten about, by the time they realize we’re gone, we’ll be all finished up.”

“How would we gain access to the information?” Aqualad said, immediately earning points by not saying it was morally wrong to go behind their mentor’s backs—even if Aqualad’s mentor was also his king.

Wally reached out and gave Aqualad a bump on the shoulder, grinning. Dude must’ve been just as anxious to prove himself as anyone. “Speedy, Greenie gives you all his passwords, doesn’t he?”

Roy smirked and gave a thumbs-up. “You bet your ass he does.”

000

This was the truth:

The Justice League was founded through text message.

Recent overhauls in technology made the Justice League prevail in places previous superhero teams had failed. There was a reason the League hadn’t formed before it had—even though self-proclaimed ‘evil fighting’ teams had been around seemingly forever, some of them furiously moral by modern day’s standards. Some less.

The first mobile phone call was placed in 1973, a good three decades after the Justice Society dissolved in ’51. The first text message was sent in 1992. It read, ‘Merry Christmas.’ The Flash II first gave out his phone number to Green Lantern II in winter of 2001, pressing a slip of paper into his palm after a handshake and saying in a low tone. “Our predecessors were friends. And… I don’t know. Everything that’s happened this last year. You look like you could use a friend right now. I know I could.”

Green Lantern coughed. Took the folded piece of notebook paper. Stared at it and the smudging pencil numbers and lightning bolt signature. “Uh. Thanks. Sorry, I don’t really, uh— I wasn’t expecting this.”

The Flash clapped him on the back. “Yeah, well, maybe I’m moving a little _fast_. Haha, sorry. Seriously, though. Call me if you need any help. Not that I’m saying you’ll need help. But seriously, you look a little lost.”

“Hey! I’ve been doing this as long as you have,” Green Lantern said, crumpling the paper in his hand. The media had been focused in on metas more than it had been since the JSA’s heyday—maybe _more_ than they had during the JSA’s heyday—and the end result of all the mess was it would have been known if the Flash had been in operation even a _month_ before Green Lantern first powered up in Coast City, and he had _not_.

“Yeah,” Flash said, nodding and grinning just enough to set Green Lantern on edge. “But you’re alone, right? I mean, I know the original Flash, but as far as I know, you’re the only Green Lantern out there right now.”

He scowled. “Trust me, there are others. Look, I’ve been trained just fine, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

“All right, hey, it’s my bad,” the Flash said, stepping back in less than the blink of an eye. He raised his hands in surrender and looked down at the ground like an apology. “I am glad to hear it, though. I can’t help but worry about all the other heroes who’re running around out there without anyone helping them figure it out.”

Green Lantern paused. “..Oh. Right.”

His shoulders had been tense for months, tense ever since he’d first seen the crash a year ago, first gotten the ring—and he still was tense, but the strain in his jaw eased somewhat when he looked over the Flash once more, a little more slowly than he had at any point during their accidental, frantic team-up.

A state-hopping spree killer who’d run all the way from Coast City to Keystone. A dangerous guy, for sure, but nothing against a power ring, and when the speedster had arrived on the scene, it had rubbed a bit too closely to _doomed to fail from the first. Total backwater system. I wonder if he can_ speak _. Ugly, aren’t they? Poor 2814, with a guardian like—_

“Yeah, look, it’s fine.” Green Lantern shook his head and lifted his free and tried to make a gesture that at least _looked_ a little apologetic so he wouldn’t have to say it out loud. “Look, here, I’ll give you my number, too. But I swear, if I get a ton of bills from this—”

But Flash was grinning and laughing. “Same, same.”

Two weeks later, Ambassador of the Amazons, the selfsame warrior of the All-Star Squadron who’d rolled tanks and flown air cover during the second world war for the Allied Powers— _Wonder Woman_ returned to the world of man.

And the Superman rose to meet her.

The first known meeting between the Man of Steel and the Princess of Themyscira was shaky footage from the skies above one of D.C.’s many museums. Two human-shaped spots slowly rising into the air, colored brightly in red and blue. Televised live while the whole world held its breath.

The encounter lasted all of five minutes before the two figures parted and flew away.

(“I’m afraid I can’t… give out much contact information right now,” said Superman, his shoulders back and voice steady, even as the winds whipped around them and the crowds below grew larger, “but I can give you this. If you push the button, it emanates a specific high-frequency sound that, as far as I know, only I can hear. As soon as the sound reaches me, I’ll come to your location. Please. If you ever need anything, or even just to talk—don’t hesitate to use it.”

“Your hospitality is appreciated,” Wonder Woman said as she took the beacon: a small fabric strap with buckles and a button cast in shape of Superman’s crest. She looked it over with sharp eyes. “I am afraid I have no equivalent token, but know that should you require assistance, so long as the cause is just, I will stand with you.”)

It would come as no surprise that it was Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Wonder Woman, who first reached out to Orin, King of Atlantis, Poseidonis, and the Seven Seas, _Aquaman_. They met on an island, as close to a middle ground as they would be able to get, and exchanged pleasantries and gifts. Queen Mera found her delightful. Wonder Woman found her wise.

Perhaps it would also come as no surprise that it was another alien who reached out to Superman in secret, mere months after his first appearance. They accosted the Kryptonian on the roof of one of Metropolis’ many sky scrapers, shedding their human guise, pleading, _how have you come here? Please, I wish to go home._

(“I’m so sorry,” Superman said, shivering, not out of cold. “I—I’m _so_ sorry. I’ll do everything I can to help. Your home, _oh_ —”

J’onn J’onzz believed him, not out of the desperation of a man grasping as his last lifeline, but because there was no liar skilled enough to fake the overwhelming grief _sympathy_ HOPE that rolled off Superman like waves.)

It was Green Lantern, in 2002, who exchanged contact information (cautiously) with Martian Manhunter, after a series of “I have not been able to contact a Green Lantern, though I was initially hopeful that the appearance of one on Earth once again might mean my recovery,” and Superman’s reply of, “I’ll get his attention, don’t worry,” followed by a short series of, “didn’t really realize an established alien hero on earth was _stranded_ here,” and “I’ll see what I can do but… I don’t really know protocol well enough yet to say anything definitively. But I’ll keeping touch.”

Then, in February 2003, Superman called Wonder Woman’s brand new cellphone from a discarded one on the street (he was still hesitant to risk his own number when he could give out the signals), and said, “There’s seven of them and one of me, and each is a match for me one-on-one. I could probably handle it eventually, but—they’re in a major metropolitan area. And they’re not stopping.”

“I’m on my way.”

Then, the revelation, “They’re _aliens?_ ” and a frantic call to the Green Lantern in hopes he might have some answers to _who_ , _why_ , and _how do we get them to stop?_

Green Lantern picked up on the third ring, but it was the Flash who arrived first, saying, “Lantern’s on his way. I’ll get the civilians out; you two just keep the big guys busy.”

(Green Lantern, when he arrived, did _not_ know offhand what was happening, but was more than happy to lend his assistance in sheltering civilians and throwing all he had into the fight.)

 _“One approaches the sea!_ ” Wonder Woman called, three hours in, shouting for Atlantis to be warned, only to sag in relief as Aquaman rose from the waters, a wave rising with him, and swept the glass appellaxian aside.

He stepped on land, declared Atlantis’ allegiance in his actions, and leapt into the fray.

Even with his assistance, it was not long later that Superman was thrown backwards through an office building. Spiraling out of control, he was unexpectedly halted mid-air with a power outside of his own.

Looking around in confusion, he beamed as Martian Manhunter revealed himself, surveyed the destruction around them, and said, “Perhaps I can be of some assistance.”

000

You had never seen a world so entranced with its heroes. So terrified.

Three cities—all along the U.S. East Coast, all neighbors—were leveled. Many were dead. More were injured. But it could have been worse.

It could have been so much worse.

It was weeks of media swarms, national guard, and search-and-rescue teams. Weeks of trying to stay above the law in to be in those cities, helping, cleaning their mess—

(“I know I should feel great about stopping them,” Flash said, arms full of the medical supplies he was transporting. There were more strapped on his back. There were even more needed. “But I feel like I should do more.”

“You saved many lives that day, Flash,” Wonder Woman said, lifting blocks of concrete and setting them aside in neat piles, clearing the roadways and searching for survivors beneath the rubble. “You fought admirably.”

Flash huffed, shook his head, but said, “Thanks.”

And then he was gone.)

Even among the carnage and destruction, few of the victims were more high-profile than Victor Stone.

Victor Stone, whose father had dragged him through the rubble, into a bunker of S.T.A.R labs while the battle raged above. Whose father whipped the scientists and doctors taking refuge into an emergency surgery that had only existed in theory.

No. According to the media, no one had been more changed by the day than the Cyborg.

000

They were in this together, now, whether they wanted to be or not. The six most high-profile beings on Earth.

There was a conic mountain in Rhode Island, brought to their attention by Aquaman. It was mostly a mountain in comparison to the low land around it, but that just meant it was small enough that, between Green Lantern and Superman, they had a comfortably sized open space within a few hours. In the meantime, Flash went dumpster diving with Martian Manhunter, turning up with three shredded couches, a few chairs, and a table, all salvaged from various dumps and trash sites in the closest five states. Wonder Woman assisted with shifting rubble as Aquaman cleared the local waters and assisted setting the more structured rocks in places they would be unobtrusive, or aid in structuring reefs.

The crisis period of the invasion’s cleanup had ended. Those who could be rescued had been. Those who weren’t—hopefully there was family left enough for funeral arrangements, and peace would come, eventually, to the survivors. There was still much to do. More rubble to shift, more supplies to carry, more watches to stand, but the crisis period was over. There were four alien husks sitting in the D.C. S.T.A.R lab and thousands of papers and news stations talking rapid-fire. Churches filled with refugees, posters and letters, charities frantic with donations, and the six most high profile people in the world just wanted to rest.

Flash brought a small meal he claimed was for blood sugar, and apologized for eating in front of them by offering a six-pack of beer.

“I’m sorry, J’onn,” Superman said, taking a bottle anyway, and just holding it while he sat in one of the slightly badgered wooden chairs Flash had recovered. “You shouldn’t have had to get tangled up in this.”

“I should have gotten involved sooner,” Martian Manhunter replied. He sat quietly by the edge of the group, mostly content to let them carry on, and politely declined when Superman passed the pack of beer to him, sending it onward to Aquaman and Wonder Woman. “Though I am stranded here, Earth has been a generous second home. I have chosen to defend it, just as you have.”

“Still,” Superman said. “I’m sorry at how much more trouble this is probably going to cause you.”

Martian Manhunter hadn’t been widely known before the appellaxians, but fourty-seven minutes of assembled cellphone and newscamera footage had done a lot to change that. Fourty-seven minutes of footage. Out of eight hours of fighting. It had been a long day.

Green Lantern was quiet, sitting beside Flash on a cream colored ottoman with a broken arm rest. He stared down at his own beer, held loose in his fingers. Popped the cap off with a glowing green bottle opener. He took a shallow drink, and resumed staring at it.

“You think there are others?” Flash said, “More of those sorts of guys?”

Green Lantern snorted, still slumped. “There are more of those kinds of monsters than you would _believe_.”

“I mean _coming_. As in, on their way.”

“You said they claimed to be fighting each other for the right to rule,” Aquaman said, looking at Superman. He sat on a single chair as well, back-straight, and drank his beer like it was an old friend.

“Yeah. When they first arrived, they said something along those lines. I asked them to take it somewhere uninhabited. Like Venus.” Superman paused. “Venus _is_ uninhabited, right?”

He looked to both Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, who only looked blankly back.

“Regardless of what their original intentions were,” said Wonder Woman, sitting at the edge of her simple chair. She had tried her beer, made a face, and set it down on the floor by her feet, where it remained. “we cannot discount the possibility that their defeat won’t attract retaliation.”

“The U.S. government’s already talking about it,” said Green Lantern. “Currently DEFCON 3. As far as I know, the U.N.’s calling a meeting ASAP. We’re kind of lucky that they’ve had three years to get over the whole shock of aliens—”

He jerked his thumb to Superman, who looked sheepish.

“—because now, that’s not going to be distracting them. But I’m really not sure what they’ll be able to _do_ to stop it if more come. 2814’s honestly down as a ‘low activity’ Sector. There’s not much locally around here that’s capable of space flight, much less mounting a full invasion force. Anyone who does invade? Is gonna be way out of Earth’s league.”

“Then we shall rise to their level,” Wonder Woman said, clenching her fist. “If this show of force provokes rather than deters, we must be prepared to defend Earth once more. There are no other options.”

“What do you suggest?” said Aquaman, leaning forward and setting down an already mostly-empty beer.

“We are speaking as if invaders had already arrived, and Earth, lost,” she said, rising from her chair. “When the truth is that—though the toll was great—we have _repelled_ the invaders. We have already proven our prowess in battle individually. Combined, we have defeated an unexpected foe we had no prior knowledge of. Armed with experience and a stronger alliance, why should we not be able to repeat this feat?”

“You want to make this permanent,” Superman said, perking up a bit. “Form a response team.”

“Wait, are we the black ops of vigilantes, now?” Green Lantern said, setting down his beer and leaning back in his chair to look slowly around their group, skepticism thick in his voice. “ _Seriously?_ ”

“There is precedent in the JSA,” Wonder Woman said.

“I understand you miss your old team,” Superman said, holding his palms up as she looked towards him, “but fighting the Axis and fencing off an alien invasion we don’t even know _exists_ yet is… a big leap.”

“The members of the Justice Society of America did more good together than they were capable of separately, both before the war, and for the time they existed after it.” When she didn’t sound angry, Superman relaxed again, and considered her words.

“She’s right,” Flash said, making the whole room shift focus towards him. “I mean, even with my superspeed, I’ve got my hands full covering Central and Keystone, and that’s with just the usual rogue gallery and normal criminals. I don’t normally take down _space giants._ ”

“We will only become more capable after time and experience together, as well. It is not inconceivable that should a new threat appear, we would be able to stand against them,” said Martian Manhunter, nodding towards the other five in turn. “And it is not as if this group will _only_ have to rise to the call of alien invasions. There are many dire situations on Earth which may be improved by the presence of a cohesive superhero team.”

Superman’s mouth fell into a hard line and he looked down at the floor, as if puzzling something out that required great concentration.

Flash nodded his agreement, even as he said, “The media’s going to have a field day with this.”

“Hate to break it to you, but I think they already are,” said Green Lantern, groaning.

“No, like. What they’re saying. A one-time team-up in dire straights is one thing. But making it a regular thing? A vigilante _team_. Outside the law, handling things we’re doubting the U.N. can handle, maybe even other stuff—and only _one_ of us is one hundred percent human, and they don’t actually _know_ that.”

“Hey!” Green Lantern reached out to punch Flash in the shoulder, but failed spectacularly when Flash shifted onto the edge of the couch in a millisecond, out of arm’s reach.

“Total field day,” Flash said again, grinning as Aquaman chuckled.

“And yet, we are not dissuaded,” Aquaman said, gathering himself and settling back in his chair. “In fact, I have heard no objections at all, thus far.”

“We’ve only really had a few seconds to process,” Green Lantern said, sending Flash a sharp look. “Some of us go faster than others.”

“Process as you like,” Aquaman said, reaching down to his drink. “I still don’t hear any objections.”

And there weren’t.

“This is crazy,” Green Lantern said.

“Almost as crazy as alien boot camp,” Flash said, grinning at him.

Green Lantern shot him a glare through the mask. “Yeah, or intentionally getting struck by lightning.”

“It was an accident!”

“ _Hell_ of an accident!”

“Dare I ask?” said Wonder Woman.

Green Lantern shook his head slowly. “You really don’t want to know.”

Superman cleared his throat and interrupted, raising his head again as he spoke, his face still smooth and serious. “If we really can help people more effectively as a team, then I’m all for it, but it’s going to come with complications. A _lot_ of complications. We can’t go into this denying them.”

“We won’t,” Wonder Woman said, reaching out to a hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Earth needs as much help as she can get.” Superman gave Wonder Woman a grateful smile and nod of thanks as she squeezed his shoulder. Then, he turned towards Martian Manhunter. “I can’t ask any of you to go along with this if you’re not up for it, but you especially, J’onn. The last thing I want to do is hinder your getting home.”

Martian Manhunter shook his head, an odd expression growing on his face. It was hard to place, but looked somewhere between amused and pleased. “It would not be a hindrance. If anything, it may provide me more opportunities to discover new options. If not, I made the decision to serve of my own free will.”

Superman nodded, gave him a smile and a soft, ‘thank you’ before turning to the man beside Wonder Woman.

“Aquaman. Your Majesty,” he said, “Your situation is different than ours. You’re… already very public. We’re extremely grateful for everything you’ve already done, but if we continue on, it _will_ place you in a strained position. If we’re really doing this, are you _certain_ you want your name on it?”

“It is unknown to many, but I was raised a surface-dewller,” Aquaman said, grinning a bit ruefully. “Much has changed in recent years, but I would be remiss to abandon half of my home. Regardless, what happens on the Surface will affect the goings of the deep. If Atlantis is to survive, I cannot ignore that.”

“Associating closely with aliens and metahumans—” Superman began.

“—who are actively working to defend the Earth? I see no better way to strengthen the ties between Atlantis and the surface world than to offer Atlantis’ strength in times of crisis.” He gave a short laugh and sat back to regard the others, looking confident in his declaration.

“We should probably smooth over, uh, technicalities before actually _seriously_ going out and announcing we’re doing this,” Flash said, having returned to his former place on the couch and rescued his beer, which Green Lantern had held captive in a green bubble for a short while. “Superman’s right. It’s _fantastic_ you want to help, but you and Wonder Woman are representatives of whole _nations_. Meta prejudice aside—”

Green Lantern coughed.

“—Vigilantism is illegal,” Flash said. “Trust me. Coast City, Central, Metropolis? All those places are pretty calm about it, because the last three years we’ve toed the line and worked up our reputations to the point where the police are more willing to work with us and give the whole, ‘just to remind you there’s a warrant for your arrest,’ speech, and will pretend to be busy looking for handcuffs while we run away. Or fly away, for _some_ people, but you know what I mean. Heck, Central’s currently got plans to construct a _museum_ for the Flashes, but anywhere outside Keystone County, I’m fair game. If we’re doing this _and_ involving you both, we need to get official sanctions to do what we do, draw up an agreement and rules to abide by, and probably a lot more stuff I can’t think of right now, because I’m not a lawyer, I just hang out around them sometimes. But you get what I mean. There’s gonna be _way_ more to this than just putting all our hands in and saying, ‘yeah.’ We need to keep this quiet and between us until we’re sure we’ve got a handle on how we’re doing things.”

“How did the JSA do it?” Green Lantern asked, looking to Wonder Woman. She shook her head, looking apologetic.  
  
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I arrived after its establishment.”

“I can ask the first Flash if he knows how it went down,” Flash said.

Superman nodded. “Good. In the meantime, we can get into contact with someone who knows international law.”

“We will also require a more reliable method of communication,” Martian Manhunter added. The rest of the room turned to look at him. “We will need trust that we will not abuse our knowledge of each other once it is given, and to do that, we will need reassurance that the group is the _only_ ones we must be concerned about. A secure communication device will help.”

Slowly, the focus shifted to the only two masked people in the room. The Flash shifted uneasily and looked at Green Lantern, who looked back with a strained smile.

Finally, Green Lantern sighed. He leaned forward in his chair, picked up his drink again, and took a deep swig. “Honestly, after three years, I’m kinda about fed up with this ‘secret identity’ thing, but vigilantism’s a weird business. If our identities get out, it’s not villains _I’m_ worried about. Not as much as the normal humans I’d have to deal with.”

“I’ve got a family,” said Flash, still smiling, but a little less brightly. A little more nervous energy than buoyancy. “and I _am_ worried about villains getting to them if my real name got widely known. Our identities aren’t going to stop us from being in the team, but they _will_ put us in danger if it gets out.”

“I already have Lantern’s phone number,” said Superman.

“Yeah, but you also have enough integrity to not track us down with it,” Flash said, lifting his hand and gesturing as he spoke, and ignoring Green Lantern’s quite comment about ‘and x-ray vision.’ “We’re not worried about _you guys_ doing anything, it’s just hard to break habit at this point. And we _get_ it, it’s hard to trust someone in a mask, but if our calls are intercepted—”

Green Lantern cut in. “—or if Superman shows up at our doorstep one day. Even if you dress down, it’s not going to take much for people to—”

“—Superman wouldn’t show up at your doorstep,” the man in question said, holding up a hand when Flash moved to respond. “He wouldn’t.”

Superman took a deep breath and asked to have a moment. The whole room paused, glancing between each other as a strange sort of anticipation settled while they waited to see what was causing Superman to hesitate.

Finally, he reached behind his back. From what must have been a pocket previously hidden by his cape, he pulled a pair of cracked, thick-framed glasses, and slid them on. His shoulders slumped down. He mussed his hair.

Even wearing the cape and crest, his countenance changed entirely. He appeared shorter, some pudge now noticeable around his stomach. Even his voice softened from his usual baritone into a light tenor. “Superman won’t know anything about you, x-ray vision or not. But Clark Kent may have a few friendly acquaintances in Missouri.”

The room fell silent for a long, long time.

Martian Manhunter seeming to be the only one unaffected. Wonder Woman and Aquaman were startled, tense, having assumed with the rest of the world that Superman was like them, with Kal-El and Superman as his only names, his only life that which he told the papers. The two masked vigilantes were slack-jawed, for much the same reasons, with the added mantra of _not even with a mask!_

Then, with all the power and grace out of his figure, Superman took the glasses off his face, hid them, straightened his back once more. Then, he had the audacity to _fidget_.

“So, uh,” Superman said. “I understand what you mean about being worried for your families and not wanting them hurt because of your choices. If you don’t want to share with everyone, that’s understandable, and I’m willing to work as a medium between those of us with public faces and those without. But please. I know what it takes to hide this from people, and if you don’t want me to tell, I will take your secrets to the grave.”

Flash and Green Lantern continued to stare at him, finally breaking their silence when Green Lantern mumbled, ‘sweet merciful _fuckballs_.’ The Flash’s voice broke in his haste to cover up his friend’s words.

“Right,” he said, “Yeah, okay, _hoo boy_ , this has been a crazy week. But right. Um. I’m in. If we were allowed to back out after that. I don’t think I can be not-in at this point, but I _do_ want a more secure way of contact than just cellphone numbers. They’ll work for now, but I don’t put it past people to be working harder than ever to figure out who we are after this fiasco, _especially_ when they find out we’re putting a team together. So cellphones will still work for now, but let’s upgrade as fast as we can, figure out a secure contact as fast as we can, so we won’t get caught off guard and waste time the next time an alien cage match starts up, or—”

“Flash, you’re speed-talking,” Green Lantern said, this time making sure his shoulder punch landed. He glanced back at Superman sharply before seeming to realize he was doing it, shooting his attention back to the rest of the group a moment later. “I agree with what I could understand of that, though. We get a secure com? And I’ll show you who I am when I’m not green and glowy. No offense to being green.”

(Martian Manhunter seemed unconcerned.)

“We shall make secure communications our first priority, then, for the comfort of our fellow teammates,” Wonder Woman said, relaxing enough for a smile to grace her features. Aquaman nodded along with her, crossing his arms over his chest and thinking for a moment.

“I’ll ask some of Atlantis’ scientists to look into it,” he said. “As well as prepare for the political repercussions this will have.”

“S.T.A.R. labs might be a good place to hit up, too,” said Flash. “For, uh, tech. You knew that already. Sheez. Crazy day.”

“I can look into what the military’s got going on as far as communications and current wire-tapping habits, but no promises,” Green Lantern said, elbowing Flash once again.

“As it appears communication equipment is well accounted for, I will attend to finding a trustworthy legal firm,” Martian Manhunter said, morphing slowly from his form to that of a middle aged African American male. “With my abilities, I believe I will be the most likely to succeed and minimize potential risk. This is my most common alias, John Jones, and is the face I shall wear when I cannot come to you as the Martian Manhunter.”

“Sounds like a party,” Green Lantern said, picking up his beer once more and tossing it back with more force. When he set it down again, he was grinning a bit manically. “And when we finally show our pretty faces in public, and people freak out about a meta takeover?”

Superman smiled right back, meeting the others excitement with his own steady reassurance. “Fortunately, I know a couple people whose major interests include trust, justice, and spin journalism.”

000

(It was three years before they were ready to announce themselves. Three years on, and six members stronger.

Green Arrow and Black Canary, for an attempt at forging meta and human relations. Green Arrow’s fortune dwindled quickly, but he was still capable and willing, and Black Canary took an interest in leadership and maintenance.

Hawkman and Hawkwoman of their own gusto and desires, introduced by Black Canary, and proving there would always be a sympathetic ear in the League to outcasts.

Atom, who had grown close with Martian Manhunter after zeta beams brought them together in star labs, after Martian Manhunter returned to Mars and returned to Earth once again, willingly this time.

Atom, who counseled Cyborg after the massive experimental surgery that had changed his life in a matter of minutes. Who worked together with the boy’s father to construct a series of zeta tubes throughout the country and into space, to reduce the response time to crises.

Cyborg, twenty-one, inducted into the League at nineteen. Three years after his surgery, and one of the most technologically literate people in the world.

Cyborg, who the League could not initially look in the eye. Cyborg, who raised his metal hands and vowed to uphold justice, peace, and truth. Cyborg, youngest of them all, who looked out the window of the watchtower and saw Earth pass them by.

Cyborg who turned to his father and said: “Never again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want it to be noted here that I had to google whether Missouri says “y’all”
> 
> Stephanie’s POV had to be removed because this is 7,000+ words worth of JLA history and Team building (lmao, see what I did there?), in other words, comparable to the ride that Timtam put me on last time I tried to write his POV. Tacking Steph’s section on at the end felt… very out of place. She’ll have a nice whole thing next chapter, though, as well as a bit more history of Batman’s group, a bit of Tim, and some Nightwing. Jason is hopefully taking a red for a little while, instead of elbowing his way into other people’s chapters like he’s been trying to do. Admittedly, elbowing his way into other people’s lives is what he does best, but still.
> 
> For those who don’t know the YJ cartoon as well, this history is largely drawn from the wiki, with smatterings from the JL: War animated feature. Supes reveals himself first in 2000, followed by Flash II and Green Lantern II, whose predecessors were friends and fought alongside Wonder Woman through the 40s. The modern superhero world in YJ is very young, and without Batman to be the voice of caution, I’m hoping everyone is appropriately in character, because without Batman, they all have to be cautious instead, since they don’t have the guarantee of him balancing them out. We’re also going to pretend it was Aquaman who suggested the cave, rather than Batman (because you know it was Batman who suggested they have their secret meetings in a cave)
> 
> The JL will hopefully be in this fic more than they were in the show, which was one of my main (few) complaints about it. But I also know very little about the JL and am winging it, so if you have any suggestions about characterizations or potential avenues to take with people, lemme know. This fic is still going to focus on the batfam and the Team, but the JL would be ridiculous to not appear at least somewhat and they very much shape the world everyone lives in. So. I hope the history lesson was enjoyable? I just really wanted this off my computer
> 
> (also, it appears some people thought the note at the bottom of last chapter was sarcasm? It was not sarcasm. This fic is a rampaging train, I’m holding onto the caboose, trying to climb to the front and pull the emergency break before it goes off the rails, and seriously that hospital is fucked.)
> 
> Okay actually stopping. now thank you everyone who’s been leaving comments!! They are treasured and really make my day
> 
> Back to the bats asap


	6. Chapter 6

It was a week after the disaster at Cadmus that Wally West found Roy Harper.

No-Longer-Speedy had nowhere to go but back to Star City, and the only thing more bitter than that realization was how the Zeta tube announced him with that stupid nickname Ollie had given him when he was thirteen.

Then fourteen, and dumb, and the first kid hero.

Of course, he’d gone and fucked up. Of course, he’d ruined the gig for everyone else. Of course, he had the reputation of disappearing because not long after the papers took notice of him, he’d gone and gotten himself captured, lost about three months of memory, and _that_ was what got everyone pissy, wasn’t it.

He hadn’t cared much at first, because all the casual comments that went something like, ‘haha, Speedy is such an angry person and gets mad at everything, let’s say words and see if we can make him angrier?’ All the, ‘you don’t understand the consequences?’ All the, ‘you’re too young, too impulsive, too _fragile_ ,’s? All those comments, he let roll off his back, because Roy Harper was _not_ an angry person. He was pretty fuckin’ peppy most of the time, if he did say so himself, he just had his buttons. Everyone did.

Ollie? Power imbalances. Dinah? Strategic. Consistent. Intentional. Irritation. Superman? Probably hostage situations. Hal Jordon? What _wasn’t_ that guy’s button? Even Wally had buttons that made him lose his shit.

Even Sainted Barry Allen had things that just took him, crunched up all his patience, and sent him spiraling over the edge into something that looked, in him, like anger. ( _Kid Flash. Hospital bed. Broken fingers or burns, it didn’t matter anymore. “I’m fine, Uncle B. Really. Don’t do this right now.”_ )

But the collective Justice League? Their button was always the kids. Their button was Don’t Let What Happened To Roy Harper Happen Again.

And then there was Cadmus.

There was Cadmus, where the clone was shaking three steps behind Roy, new, and inexperienced, and breaking. Aqualad stepping towards Diana, arms at his sides, trying to take the heat to the point that Aquaman looked half ready to send him back under the sea.

Flash kneeling on the ground, tense as a bowstring. He wouldn’t leave Kid Flash’s side after realizing about the twisted ankle.

Ollie standing around looking dumbstruck, not even trying to put out a fire or comfort the _kid_ who’d just gone against his programming to save their lives.

Superman, a fading speck, a silhouette against the moon. _Where are you going, he’s your_ kid!

Diana, in charge after the Man Of Cowardice ran away, had never approved of teenaged heroes, and as long as she wore the hypocrite lenses, Roy wasn’t going to be able to change her mind. Unfair playing field. Unfair playing fields were supposed to be Ollie’s specialty. The _Arrow’s_ specialty. It’s what they did. Looked at the world, looked at the things that looked impossible to fix, and said _bigger they are, harder they fall._

But Ollie just stood there, off balance among the ruins of Cadmus, looking lost and stupid.

And Speedy had long run out of arrows to shoot, so he lobbed his hat at his mentor instead. Then, stones. Bits of concrete and metal debris. Then, when not even that worked, he lobbed words. Screamed them. Loud against the rubble and distant sirens.

“Why do we even _bother_ if the people we want to impress are like _you?_ ”

(But it didn’t ring true. It didn’t ring true. He’d never done this for approval of his mentor. Had he? Hadn’t he run away the first time because it was—)

It wasn’t that Wally West had gone and gotten himself maimed by a demented child in the weirdest city on Earth. It wasn’t that the Rocket kid was immature, and no one knew her mentor’s identity. It wasn’t how Aqualad was uncomfortably close to a Surfacer’s definition of a child soldier. It wasn’t legalities or the danger of being replaced by some kid grown in a lab, no matter how close they had almost come tonight. It wasn’t fear over what the U.N. or public at large would think—

No. It was about how Roy Harper, First Kid Hero, had fucked up, vanished for three months, almost died, sent everyone into a panic, resurfaced in _Tibet_ of all places, and spent a couple more months being ‘rehabilitated.’

It was how Green Arrow got close to Black Canary. A few happenstance teamups that brought up her background in counseling troubled youths, coping with trauma, and unusual cases, and Green Arrow was on her doorstep on his knees faster than you could say, ‘Roy was back on U.S. soil.’

Ollie’d somehow gotten her to come visit the bunker after something had gone down in downtown—not that Roy would know, since he was benched indefinitely and no one would so much as let him watch the news anymore—

(“Look, I know what people think,” Roy heard Ollie say from where he was eavesdropping at the door separating the bunker from the living quarters. “I just—I want to make sure he’s okay. I can’t take him to a normal therapist without putting us both in danger all over again. I was just hoping, maybe—”)

(“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know,” Roy said, standing up and pacing the room instead of sitting on the couch Canary’d provided, something new and _twisting_ in his chest that hadn’t ever been there before. He’d been angry before, but he’d never been so _indignant_ about someone being concerned for him. It was okay for her to be concerned. It made sense. He should’ve been more concerned for himself. He should— “ _I don’t want to remember what happened._ I just—it’s three months. I should be more freaked out about not remembering what happened, but I feel _fine_. There’s nothing wrong with me, you’re all freaking out over nothing, why can’t you just— It’s not Ollie’s fault! Tell them they can’t kick him out of the League, _it’s not his fault!_ ”)

Dinah Lance, Black Canary, was the last person Roy wanted to face on the other side of the Zeta tube, but luck hadn’t ever been his strong suit.

She was there, crouched in the corner of the bunker, with another girl beside her. The vigilante kid they’d escorted out of Gotham not a few weeks prior, when Roy had crouched with Aqualad and Kid Flash and first batted around the idea of stealing a League mission.

That’d worked out great.

(Bruises were starting to form on his arms from where the clone had strapped him down on a steel gurney. He’d thrashed against the bindings, shouting as Kid Flash and Aqualad screamed in their glass casings when electricity flowed through—)

“Speedy?” Dinah said, looking up as the light from the zeta tube faded. Roy was already halfway across the bunker. He’d almost thought he was going to make it the full distance before she called out. “Is everything—?”

“No,” he said, and kept walking. He glanced again at the vigilante kid. Blond. Did the archer thing, which was why she’d been placed with Green Arrow. It figured Ollie would leave her for Black Canary to take care of. Stupid, _typical_ Ollie.

“What’s wrong?” Dinah got to her feet slowly, her voice firm but gentle. The Gothamite’s eyes were whipping around between them. Great, he was hopping from one terrified kid right into upsetting another. (The clone behind him was fucking _shaking,_ and maybe it was in anger, but with Superman smudged against the moon—) “Speedy, what happened?”

“ _No_.” He refocused his gaze on the door to the living quarters and redoubled his pace, not daring to glance in Dinah or the Gothamite’s direction again. “I’m not Speedy anymore. I quit. If Ollie comes in, tell him he can fuck right back off.”

He made it to the bunker door and out through it before Dinah could follow him.

The door groaned shut behind him, falling into place and latching with a loud click. Just before it closed completely, he could faintly make out Dinah’s voice. “Artemis, I need to make a call, will you—”

Then the door was shut, and all sound cut off.

(Five years ago, he’d stood in this same spot, and heard Green Arrow say, _Dinah, please, I can’t handle him._ )

Roy bolted to his room.

What had _been_ his room.

It was still just as he’d left it that morning.

He tried hard not to think of the last time he’d run away. He packed two bags, one of gear and one of personal items, stuffed his wallet with as much cash as he had on hand, and left out the window.

(Seven months after the Apallaxian invasion, his second father died. Three bus rides and several fits of uncontrollable shaking later, he lived a week hidden in Star City’s Glades, watching for the Green Arrow. Never thought his escape from the authorities trying to get him to a children’s home would be the same way he’d be leaving his—)

There were plenty of apartments for rent in Star City, but none at one in the morning. He got a roadside hotel and got put on the ‘if anyone asks, I’m not here’ list. After disabling gps tracking, he got five phone voicemails and even more text messages. He deleted them all, and didn’t bother to check his email for two days. He stripped down the Speedy uniform and spent two days revamping it. On the third day, he patrolled, intentionally dodging Ollie’s usual route. By the end of the following day, Roy had an apartment and a move-in date.

The first night in his new apartment, Wally found him.

“The fuck you doing in here?” Roy said when he heard two clumsy feet hit the floor. He lifted his head and scowled at Wally, who crossed his hands and huffed when he answered. Roy’s temples throbbed.

It was a dumb coincidence that Wally came in the window. A dumber one that he did it while Roy was on the floor with his head on his knees, but it was a coincidence the speedster apparently took at face value, judging by the concern on his face that he quickly swept away in favor of winking.

“What’s it _look_ like I’m doing? This is a holdup. Put ‘em where I can see ‘em,” the speedster said, making finger-guns. Bang, bang. “Also, you left your window open unattended, and as the nephew of a cop, I have a civic duty to advice you not do that right above a fire escape.”

“Go step on a cactus,” Roy said, letting his head drop back onto his knees.

Wally made a dumb noise and walked across the room, plopping down on the floor beside Roy, splaying his legs wide and knocking his back against the wall. His sneakers squeaked as he got himself situated. Must’ve been a slow night in Central for him to be all the way out in Star without even his uniform on. Or maybe he was benched. He was probably benched. Wally usually _listened_ when he was benched.

“You doing okay?” Wally said. “No one’s been able to get ahold of you.”

Even without looking at him, Roy could tell he’d probably reverted back to that stupid concerned face. “I’m fine. Just a headache.”

“Stress headache?”

“No, that’d be stupid.” Roy snorted. He regretted it a little when his head gave a vague twinge in response, but whatever. The pain wasn’t nearly enough to stop him if he wanted to do something, just bad enough to make him hate his life and want to go to sleep.

Wally dropped the topic, thankfully, but like a true speedster, that didn’t stop him talking. “So, you were really serious about leaving Greenie?”

“Does it look like I was joking?” Roy grunted.

“Well, no, and it kinda looks like you’ve already got a down payment on this place, but I mean I could be misreading the situation or—”

“—you’re not.”

The cold, hard finality in Roy’s tone must have finally gotten through to Wally in some capacity, because for a minute, the kid clamped his mouth shut and just quietly twiddled his thumbs.

It lasted much longer than Roy ever expected a speedster’s silence to last. Kid was trying. Roy rubbed his temples and sighed again before deciding if he was going to feel guilty, he may as well multitask. “How’s the clone?”

“Superboy?” Wally said. The finger-twiddling stopped, and he didn’t wait for Roy to comment on the name before launching ahead. “Oh, dude, it’s great! He’s on our team!”

Which set Roy straight back into his Cold Finality voice. “ _Team?_ ”

Wally didn’t respond to the tone this time. He was too busy, his hands talking as quickly as his mouth. “Yeah, after all the stuff that went down after you walked out, we basically threatened to do the same unless they gave us a chance and they agreed to let us use Mount Justice and they’ll give us real hero missions and stuff. It totally worked! And now that we found you, you can come join us and—”

“—pass,” Roy grunted. He rolled back his shoulders and lifted his head, ignoring how the dull stab of his headache got worse when he moved. “Join up with a team of super-kiddies who’re still under the League’s thumb right after I walked out? No way.”

Wally deflated, a pout on his face that was much too childish for someone in the business. “Oh, come on, Roy. This is _it_. This is what we’ve been waiting for. I’m going to college in one year—this and next summer are all I’m gonna have _left_ , and I’m finally in basically a small Justice League?”

“Yeah,” Roy said, “A _baby_ Justice League. Why settle when you can get the real deal?”

Wally groaned and let his head thud back against the wall, his red bangs tangling and falling into his eyes as he did. “Dude, there’s _no_ way I’m getting into the League by next summer. And once I’m in, what am I supposed to do about school, really? Maybe if this happened when I was fifteen and I still had, like, three years pretty much free, but we’ve _got_ this now. I don’t get why you’re not super hyped.”

“Because it’s a _distraction_ ,” Roy all but hissed. Wally rolled his eyes, unaffected.

“Dude, I get it. You wanna be a career Leaguer. But maybe just chill for once about it? I mean, maybe being in the Team is just step one to getting into the Big Leagues? And in the meantime, you get to hang out with us, and it’ll be awesome. Aqualad’s there, and there’s an archer chick you can, like, I don’t know. Talk about fletching with?”

That did give Roy pause. He raised his eyebrows. “’Archer chick?’”

“Yeah, Artemis. You remember that Gotham vigilante? We staked out outside her house and got rained on for like three hours?”

Gah. Every time he thought about it, everything looked even dumber in hindsight. Roy might’ve been trying to erase the whole business from his mind. It wasn’t working well. Week old memories were still a week too recent.

“She’s kind of in supervillain witness protection?” Wally continued, rolling his head a bit and tangling his hair against the wall even more. He chewed on his lip and watched the ceiling. “Apparently, her parents were bigtime villains; her mom’s reformed, but her dad still has these major connections to an assassin ring or something? So she and her mom’re telling the League everything they know, and we’re gonna basically train her as a vigilante and get them into protection is basically the trade-off? So how that _actually_ works is that she’s living with m—”

“So Green Arrow’s taken her in,” Roy said, snorting again. He hit the floor with his fist before he even knew what he was doing, and winced at the jolt it sent to his brain. “Because he has such a good track record of keeping his charges _safe_.”

Wally stilled at that.

Roy’s wince was internal this time.

(He didn’t _talk about those three months he didn’t remember he didn’t talk about them, he didn’t blame anyone, he just picked up his shit where he’d dropped it and continued on, because if the League remembered, if he drew attention to it, they’d try to stop him and keep him safe again no, damnit—_ )

Roy didn’t apologize. He just sat there, stupid and angry and feeling a little cold, with a headache starting to turn more potent, watching Wally West get uncomfortable enough to pull his legs up towards his chest and curl his hands on his knees.

“Dude,” Wally said, finally. Roy tried hard to not look away. “Roy. Man. You’re my best friend. My _only_ friend, sometimes. I’m worried about you, bro.”

“Don’t be,” Roy said, something hard settling in his tone again, different from before, even as he reached out and put a hand on Kid Flash’s shoulder. The same shoulder that, four years ago, had been near-dislocated by the time Roy dragged Wally out of that warehouse. The broken bones had healed and the concussion had faded in time, but even without physical markers, what had happened was real, and Roy wasn’t about to pretend he was unaware what happened to people in their line of work. There was one thing he knew and remembered, and it was that he’d never wanted to be a hero because it was safe. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

000

(It was on the other side of the country, that same early July, that a girl lifted a metal pipe and brought it down again. And down again. And down again. Four pairs of eyes looked on while she trembled.)

000

In autumn, Gotham only had four major weather patterns: cloudy, rainy, foggy, and on fire.

Sometimes it was hard to tell those last two apart.

Except that fires tended to be put out fairly quickly, and they usually didn’t get the chance to spread very far? Mostly it was just that the steam from the embers being rained on or put out by the local department looked a whole lot like fog.

Fog lasted longer. It was bigger. It was thicker. There were generally a lot more car crashes involved.

It also made it super hard to find anything from the ground level.

Naturally, that meant Nightwing had decided it was time to do some movement training.

So, her first night out as Robin in September? Steph was rooftop hoppin’ along behind Nightwing, trying _really_ hard to not lose sight of him in the cloud.

It was a little surreal to think that a few months ago, she’d sort of associated Nightwing and Robin with Imminent Death And Also Terror, and now she was shouting at him through the com to pick a building and sit his blue butt down on it until she could get a sense of her surroundings. Navigate the ground levels of Gotham? No biggy. But everything looked really different from seventeen stories up, and as awesome and fun as it was to have Nightwing chattering in her ear, sometimes she just wanted, like, fog lights or gps tracking or something.

Instead of honoring her requests, Nightwing had spent the entire night so far giving a lecture about stealth over the comlink.

So half of his disappearing act was just demonstrative at this point. Even if she’d gotten used enough to it now that a lot of the awe-and-terror had worn off and now just wanted him to stop because it was annoying. Oops?

“Yellow’s the color that catches attention fastest, so if you _want_ attention, flash the underside of your cape, but whatever people tell you about the colors standing out, not giving people a reason to look for you is the easiest way to avoid detection, no matter what colors you’re wearing. They won’t notice what they’re not—” he was saying. Then, mid-sentence, he switched from leaping manually and fired off his grapple, swinging a sharp left. Steph fumbled for her own grapple but got it up quickly enough and fired off as well, taking a moment to make sure the hook was secure before leaping. She wished he’d take his own advice and go back to wearing yellow. “—looking for. Your peripheral vision, heck, even what’s right in front of your nose? It’s mostly made up by your brain. Don’t bother with invisible. _Blend_. Same with sound. You _can’t_ be silent, so just learn how to be less loud than what’s around you.”

She landed on the building she’d thought he was aiming for and looked around, slowly, breathing heavily.

Even though its city limits technically stretched to the New Jersey mainland, most of Gotham was confined to an island, so it’d been one of the first cities to figure out the whole growing _up_ rather than growing _out_ thing. Steph remembered that much from sixth grade U.S. History. It came back to her now as she realized she was _really_ high up in the middle of Gotham’s Diamond District, overlooking a madhouse of an intersection, the highway not far in front of her. Their headlight and taillights and traffic lights all blended in the fog with the neon signs below into a weird, bright, rave of a city. Judging from the horns, something was holding up traffic, and no one was happy about it.

Even with the fog and all the streetlamps and nighttime lights below, though, the police precinct was easily the brightest building in the area. From so high up in the fog, it almost looked like a big bubble of light; even with as far out as she was, the light of the precinct’s floods made the edge of the building easy to pick out.

Commissioner Gordon hated shadows. He’d had all the city’s precincts outfitted to be some of the brightest areas in the city a couple years back, before she could remember. Even though in the press conferences said it was supposed to be a metaphor for the cops bringing light and hope back into Gotham, after three months with Nightwing and Batman? She had a pretty good idea what other reasons the cops might have for keeping the lights on, even if it was just for appearances.

Right then, they were too far north of the precinct to be spotted, unless someone had some super tricked-out binoculars, but Gordon wasn’t the only one who could do things intentionally. Despite the precinct’s floods, lights from the cars, a couple of still-lit high rise windows, and the occasional chopper or blimp passing through? It was dark up on the rooftops, and no matter how much she squinted, Steph couldn’t make Nightwing out. If she couldn’t and she _knew_ he was around here somewhere, she wished some good luck on anyone else trying to find him.

“Okay, point gotten,” she said into the com, still glancing around. “So how _do_ I find you, then?”

“Look up,” Nightwing’s voice crackled back through the com and sounded in her normal ears a half-second earlier. She twisted around, stared at a window ledge just above her head, and found Nightwing leaning over it. He gave a cheerful little wave. “No one ever remembers to look up.”

It was really tempting to nail him in the nads, now that she knew he wouldn’t kill her for it. It also made her not want to nail him in the nads, because he wouldn’t kill her for it, and it’d be kind of mean to take advantage of him like that.

Interrupting her train of thought with a crackle, the com activated again with something that wasn’t a local transmission.

“ _Nightwing,_ ” came Batman’s voice through her ear. It was slightly distorted, but easily understood.

“Still en-route to Freeze’s location, B,” Nightwing said without prompt, swinging down and away from the window ledge he was perched on to settle beside Stephanie on her outcropping. “What’s up?”

“ _A Canary reported unauthorized movement in the northmost part of Port Adams. Could be a new player, could be some of Galante’s trying to put distance between themselves and Two-Face.”_

“Anything you want out of them in particular, or is this just a ‘sorry you had a bad day at school, Nightwing, have a thing,’ thing?”

“ _Why they’ve moved, and why the docks. They may be expecting an import. Use your discretion. Try to not do anything that will have you compromised by this Sunday._ ”

“Right through my heart, B.” Nightwing put a hand on his chest and made a pained face, even though not even Batman would have cameras to see all the way up here. “I’ll check it out after talking to Freeze, okay?”

They got a soft grunt as a response and then the com went quiet once more. Steph turned to Nightwing, smiling a little even though all of a sudden her nerves had started acting up.  
  
“So, we’re knocking out the competition?” she said.

Nightwing shifted back onto his feet, no longer reclining against the building. “No, _I_ am. After Freeze, I’m dropping you off and I’ll head over to the docks, but you’re not ready for that yet.”

It was a really weird feeling, being relieved and really indignant at the same time. “Wait—what? Seriously? I’m coming along tonight just to watch you run an errand?”

“It’s an important errand?” Nightwing said. At least he had the good grace to look a little self-conscious while he shrugged. “And looking after the area without a goal like we usually do on quiet nights is even less of an errand? Besides, it’s not a bad thing, but I didn’t really think you were ready to kill yet.”

Steph… sort of wanted to argue that.

(She also _really_ didn’t.)

Because killing _happened_ , she knew that, everyone in Gotham did—but she was just the kid of a small-time gimmick crook. Killing hadn’t been on the family agenda, even when the weirdest other sorts of things had.

“So, I just go sit in the cave for the rest of the night? That’s it?” she said instead, throwing her arms out to the side.

“Well, between you and me…” Nightwing paused, looking around the rooftops for eavesdroppers in such an exaggerated way that Steph snorted and her smile started feeling more real again. “Red Hood’s going to go check in on some of our informants sometime tonight. I bet you can wheedle him into taking you.”

“He’s not going to be angry you got the ‘fun’ job?” Steph said, and the smile was now definitely real, even if outwardly it hadn’t changed much. Nightwing smiled back.

“Nah, we’ve got a system. I get dibs on mobsters and cops, he gets gangs, demolition, Park Row, and Two-Face, whenever the guy’s coin tells him to do something stupid.”

“Cops?” Steph said, and nodded her head towards the bright lights of the police precinct. “You’re not gonna go rampaging through there, right?”

“Not tonight,” Nightwing said, shaking his head. “Gotta keep Gordon feeling at least _somewhat_ secure, right?”

The gears in Steph’s brain stuttered a little.

There were a lot of things she didn’t know about the Bat’s operation—she’d only been there for a few months and had been pretty content to learn as things came, once she’d started feeling safe, but—“So Gordon _isn’t_ yours?”

A beat passed in which Nightwing just stared at her.

Then, he laughed. Not his usual ‘laughing at futility’ or ‘mildly amused and wants you to know it’ laugh, but a full-bodied, uncontrolled laugh that only stopped when he clamped a hand on his mouth and sat down on the ledge, narrowly avoiding falling off entirely.

Steph really wasn’t sure what that meant, so she just stood there, sputtering and red-faced, just adding a little assurance sure he wouldn’t roll off the edge of the building, and waited for him to breathe again.

“ _Wow,_ ” he said finally, once he caught his breathe. “Wow, no, Gordon being dirty would be—you couldn’t buy that man with—I can’t even think of a joke except for dead baby jokes, and even I won’t go that far, but—“

Another burst of snickers took hold of him. He got it under control way more quickly that time.  
  
“—if Gordon goes dirty, the whole force is going _down_.” There was a note of finality in it despite the cheer in his tone, even as he gasped, and Steph had no question of who exactly was going to do the putting-down.

“That seem sort of,” she thought for a moment, “Really unexpected?”

“That Gordon’s clean as a guy in this town can get?”

“No, no, I mean… it’s _Gordon_ ,” she said. She hadn’t had a different police commissioner that she could remember, but she knew enough about cops and being on their bad sides to know him and his reputation as the cop who was single-handedly changing the force. Honestly, she was kind of surprised he hadn’t been assassinated fifteen different ways to Sunday by now? But she guessed you couldn’t tackle a police force like Gotham from within without having brains to match your gall. Or maybe he was just super lucky. Or maybe Harry Potter was real and Gordon was a wizard. She could keep her options open.

“He’s more useful to us as a cop who’ll do what he thinks is right.” The grin was still wide on Nightwing’s face, but he was steady enough to get up and pull out his grapple again. “Right now, it’s in our interest to keep him alive and unattached. There’ll _always_ be dirty cops, we’re not worried about running out of plants, but a guy like that is worth keeping eyes on.”

With that, he leapt off the building’s edge and fired off the grapple after a second of freefall, this time letting Steph easily follow exactly where he was going.

“Rude!” she called out after him, “Wait up!”

She extracted her own grapple once more and made sure their lines wouldn’t cross when she shot. One day, it’d be instinctual, she was sure of it. But for today, as long as Nightwing had stopped showing off, she was going to take the extra moment and make sure she wouldn’t be going ‘splat.’

They made the rest of their way through lower Gotham with a little more urgency than before, now that there was somewhere to be afterwards. Nightwing made his way more directly, and in turn, Steph paid less mind to following his path exactly—she knew Gotham, too, after all. Maybe not as well as Nightwing, but well enough to figure out how to get where they were going, even if navigating by rooftop was still a pain. Having a few moments to pause and check out her surroundings without worrying about losing her partner definitely helped on that front.

She spent most of the rest of the trip thinking. The talk from earlier had brought up a question, and even though it was going to be horrible and awkward, she might not get a chance to ask it after they talked to Freeze. So… now or never, she guessed as they reached the edge of the Diamond District.

“Hey, Nightie,” she called, halfway to their destination. She moved her route close enough to his so they could talk without coms.

“Robin?” he said, looking a little surprised when she came in closer. He stopped his movements just long enough to give her time to catch up fully.

“How long d’you think Batman’s gonna let me get away with, you know…”

They had to pause the newborn conversation to leap a gap, and picked it up again once they were both on a wide and open roof, easy to walk across with plenty of cover. Nightwing’s mouth was in a line. “No, I don’t know. What?”

“Just…” Steph looked around, not that she thought they’d be watched all the way up here, but, geez, she was allowed to be a little nervous, right? “How long until I’m _supposed_ to, you know. Kill, I guess?”

“Oh!” She glanced back up at him and for a moment thought he looked relieved. It was sort of hard to tell, through, no matter how good she’d gotten at reading people through masks. “Don’t worry about that so much. Though—if you want, I can pull some strings tonight at the docks, and—”

“Nnnnnnnnnnope!” She said, holding her hands up in front of her chest. Oooh, that reaction had come out way too fast. “I mean?”

Nightwing raised his hands up too and laughed a bit. His normal laugh. Steph relaxed. “Hey, I get it. The first time is scary. Trust me, the anticipation’s the worst part. It’s really not a big deal once you do it.”

They resumed walking along the roof. Steph felt considerably lighter than when she’d first climbed up on it. “What about Other Robin?”

“Your _counterpart_ ,” Nightwing said, admonission gentle. “And no, we’re intentionally keeping you both out of those sorts of situations until you’re ready. And you don’t think if he had, he’d be the first to tell you?”

“I think he would. I hope he would?” Steph said, hopping over a vent pipe. When she landed, she scuffed at the rooftop with her shoe, nose wrinkling. “But I don’t know; he usually doesn’t say much very personal about himself.”

“And his first kill would probably fall under personal,” Nightwing said, nodding. Steph nodded too.

A moment later, she looked up hesitantly again. “…can I ask _you_ a personal question?”

Nightwing huffed and reached over to ruffle her hair. She squeaked and batted his hand away, quickly rightening her hairband and tucking her bangs back into place.

“I was nine,” Nightwing said. He’d stopped walking as she got the last of her unleashed hair back under control. “Batman started him. I finished it. And no, Batman didn’t give me the order. And yes, it was really nerve-wracking.”

“Who was it?” Steph asked, not sure how to feel about him guessing her question, but she supposed going with the flow wasn’t a bad idea.

“A man named Haly,” Nightwing said.

“Oh,” said Steph. She nodded again. She’d sort of expected Nightwing to say his first kill was a thug, or a mobster’s crony, knocked down in the name of carving out Batman’s spotted, mottled territory amid Gotham’s constant gang warfare, and that the name hadn’t been important enough to remember, if he’d ever gotten it. Should she get the name, her first time?

She scuffed the ground again with her shoe.

Nightwing made another small huffing-sound and tried to ruffle her hair again—she dodged completely this time—and he smiled at her scampering away. Some people like Batman had a resting bitch face, Steph decided, but Nightwing definitely had a resting dope face. “Hey, if it makes it easier, we can start you off on animals and work your way up. Gotham’s a city of birds. It won’t be that hard. Catch us dinner every now and then.”

“Ew,” Steph said, rolling her eyes beneath the mask. “No thanks. That is definitely one of the most serial killer things I’ve ever heard you say, and _that’s_ saying something, mister!”

But Nightwing was laughing, and he just readied his grapple again and took off once more into the night.

000

Mr. Freeze’s apartment was on the boarder of the Upper West Side, where Steph had grown up, and Chinatown.

It was close to the Dixon Docks—adding to Stephanie’s list of things Batman liked a lot: apparently, dockyards—which had a lot of shipping and meatpacking in the area. It was also a huge block of nondescript, heavily graffiti’d concrete, with steel-shuttered windows, one of which had a Nightwing perched outside it.

“Are you dry?” he asked.

“Should I not be?”

“Good as we’ll get, then,” he said, and knocked on the steel shutters until they slid up like a garage door. He slipped in, not finding that weird at all, and Steph stepped in right behind him.

Mr. Freeze’s apartment was, funny enough, _really freaking cold._

“Aaahh,” Steph said, not intending to having made a sound but very much unable to help it when confronted with the sudden wall of chilly air. She wrapped her cape around herself tightly and stared around. “Okay, what’s with _this?_ ”

And because Nightwing wasn’t a douche who would keep her guessing, he said, “Freeze had a lab accident. He has to keep his external temperature at below freezing temperatures, or he dies. He just… tends to be on the safe side and goes a bit lower than freezing. Okay, ‘safe side’ isn’t quite the way to put it. He likes freezing people’s butts off. ‘S why he’s got the name. I think he thinks it’s funny.”

“Oh,” Steph said, not laughing, but only because she was concentrating really hard on not letting her teeth chatter. “So he’s like an ice vampire or something.”

“Totally like an ice vampire,” Nightwing said, nodding. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned her down the hall they’d landed in as the window slid shut once more behind them.

“Uh, we don’t need that exit, right?” Steph said, trotting along behind him and glancing over her shoulder at the window.

“If we need an exit, Red Hood rigged us up a bomb. These walls are pretty thick, but they won’t hold against _everything_.” He grinned, but it was definitely a lot less bright than his grins had been outside. The cold must’ve been getting to him, too, though he seemed pretty determined to not show it. “But we’re all consciously trying to avoid needing a bomb, right?”

“Right.” Steph nodded. They turned a corner down the hall and the whole area opened up into a wide, square room, covered in frost and a steady haze of half-frozen vapor. Geez, it was almost as foggy in here as it was outside.

Along the walls there were electronics. Large, blocky computers that took up a whole wall cluttered up next to smaller laptops, very casually left open on a table next to what looked like the contents of at least ten boxed chemistry sets. There were more electronics that she didn’t really even have a word for or know how to describe—they mostly looked like something out of a 1950’s bad sci-fi movie lab, with tubes and fans and flashing lights mingling along with wires and brightly colored extension cords. There was even something that looked sort of like a big refrigerator towards the edge of the room, not that this place needed a fridge.

And in the middle of it all was a guy.

He wore a space suit and his skin was vaguely blue.

On one hand, it was Gotham, and Steph had grown up amongst a _lot_ of weirdness. On the other hand—

She leaned close to Nightwing and whispered, “How bad is a ‘little blue man’ joke right now?”

He choked a bit before whispering back, “Hilarious, but fatal.”

“Roger roger.” She took one very deliberate step behind Nightwing’s back. “I’m trusting your judgment, my wonderful, blue human shield.”

She couldn’t see anything but the back of his head, but Steph still got the feeling he was rolling his eyes _hard_. He took a step forward, his footstep a little louder than she’d ever heard him do, and said, “Hey, Freeze. Thanks for letting us in.”

The big blue man wearing a fishbowl turned his head so slowly to look at them, Steph wondered if his neck were frozen in place.  
  
“Boy Terror,” said Freeze, his voice a hiss. It reminded her of the sound of escaping steam. It didn’t help that, now that he was turned towards them, she realized he was wearing goggles. The lenses were dark, to the point where it almost looked like he didn’t have eyes behind them at all, and despite the experience she’d gotten with living with the Bat, she still couldn’t tell he’d turned his gaze on her until he said, “Girl Terror?”

“Robin.” She puffed up a bit, trying to straighten her back and make out like she was just covered in the cape with her arms crossed to look tough, and not because his house was giving her goosebumps.

“My partner for the night,” Nightwing said, voice mild and not once looking away from Freeze. “We want a progress report. And Batman has a delivery for you.”

Freeze sneered, his lip curling up and exposing his teeth and upper gum—the yellow and pink of it was shockingly bright compared to his blue-toned skin. Steph restrained an ‘ew,’ figuring it wouldn’t go over well.

With a face like Freeze was making, she sort of expected him to attack, and realized maybe standing behind Nightwing wasn’t so good an idea. Because if Nightwing moved, then whatever was coming would be coming right for her, and if he didn’t move, well, that was sort of her fault for making him want to stay still—so when Freeze turned around to grab something from the counter, Steph shuffled a bit to the left, tensed, bent her knees, and uncrossed her arms, ready to spring away from danger at the first notice.

Except, instead of lobbing an explosive at them or pulling out a gun, Freeze produced a manilla folder. It was crusty with frost and would probably be really soggy once exposed to not-frozen air, but the greatest danger it currently posed was probably a papercut.

That didn’t make her relax much, though. She slid a little more away from Nightwing when she realized Freeze was hardly considering her in comparison.

She realized then that her inching was taking her slowly closer to the fridge-looking thing propped against the wall. She glanced at it, not really willing to look away from Freeze for more than a moment, but also really curious about what a fridge was doing inside a freezer. Maybe he slept in it, like a vampire in a coffin? Or kept foods that shouldn’t have been frozen in it? How did he even eat in that helmet?  
  
She totally had to get inside that fridge and see if he had food in it or something. Though maybe he ate exclusively through IV. That’d explain his grumpy face really easily.

“Your ‘report,’” Freeze said, snapping the folder out at arm’s length for Nightwing to take. “You have a delivery? Progress?”

“Maybe,” Nightwing said, taking the folder and hooking it under one arm while he reached in one of his many hidden pockets for the USB. “At least, it’s another potential to look at. These readings were taken from a short range off of a being who’s rumored to be immortal.”

“A God?” Freeze said, his face not shifting the slightest even as his voice did.

“What? No. I never said anything like that.”

Steph took another few steps closer to the fridge. Once she was a little closer she could see that it was, like most everything around them, totally covered in frost. She glanced back. Both Nightwing and Freeze were straight-backed and serious, but neither seemed like they wantedto start something, so she resumed her slow, cautious journey.

“How old is this being?”

“I don’t know. He claims to be at least fifty thousand years old, but it’s sort of hard to verify that without carbon dating him. Don't tell me you can't carbon date something still alive. It was a joke. Stop making that face.”

“Not immortal, then. Merely long-lived.”

Nightwing gave out a long-suffered sigh. “Okay, yeah, if we’re talking technicalities. Not immortal, but _really_ resilient. You want what we have or not?”

“Impertinent boy.”

“At least you used big words to say that. Most people just go straight for cursing me out.”

Just in front of the fridge, Steph realized there was no visible handle on it. Thinking maybe it was one of those art deco ones with the handle on the side, she touched the surface, and managed to contain a squeak when she realized she wasn’t touching a plastic or metal fridge, but glass, and—

“Look, do you want the data or not? We went through a lot of trouble for this. Off a rumor.”

“You operate primarily through rumor and blind faith, if I recall.”

“Ha. Ha.”

Steph ran her hand over the surface of the glass, wiping clear some of the frost.

A face stared out at her.

Something prickled on the back of her neck, and Steph dropped to the floor without questioning the instinct that told her to do so.

Freeze’s fist flew right over her head.

Steph rolled away, yelping as his fist collided with the wall. A moment later, Nightwing was there, standing between her and Freeze, arms up and legs bent. “ _Stop._ She didn’t mean anything by it!”

Freeze’s voice was still monotone. It would’ve been better if he’d snarled. “She meant to harm my Nora.”

“Well, I won’t let her, and we’ll be going and out of your… hair.”

That made Freeze’s lip curl up again. Steph really wasn’t sure that making bald-jokes was a good idea right now.

“Impudence,” Freeze said, and reached out to something gun-shaped on the counter.

Nightwing twitched like he wanted to make some sort of sudden movement, but was restraining himself. “I’ll take her out myself if you just open the windows again.”

Freeze watched them for a while, Steph staying crouched in the floor and ready to bolt, and Nightwing firmly in front of her. A low sound made out of Freeze’s throat. Something like a growl.

“You will depart,” he said, and turned without looking to press a button on one of the computers.

“Thanks,” Nightwing said, leaning down to tap Steph’s shoulder. She sprang up and quickly started backing out of the room, towards the door they’d first come in by, careful to not turn her back on Freeze for even a moment. Even if Nightwing was comfortable with it, given he just turned his back on Freeze to walk away normally.

The window at the end of the hall was open again. She leapt for it, diving out of the icy building that made the October Gotham night air feel like summer.

She didn’t stop until she was at good three rooftops away, and the concrete shell of a building was hidden in the darkness behind her.

The window was shut by the time she looked back, and that was when she realized then that she hadn’t paid attention to where Nightwing was.

“Lesson number seventy-five: yes, the bright colors are also partly so Batman and I can find you if you bolt like that.”

Steph jumped and spun around with her fist out before she recognized the voice. Fortunately, Nightwing ducked the swing.

“Sorry!” she said, clasping hands over her mouth. “You startled me!”

He laughed, his hands raised by his head, and got back to his feet. “No problem. You were really going, there.”

“He had a girl in there!” Steph threw her hands up, then dropped them, then grasped her face once more. “What’s he doing with her!?”

“Nothing, right now,” Nightwing said, rolling onto the balls of his feet. Then, “Are you okay?”

Steph wasn’t sure what sort of face she was making, because despite the now-warm night air, she still felt cold and numb. “What’s ‘nothing right now,’ mean?”

Nightwing blew a slow breath out through his mouth and settled down to stand firmly. “She’s in cryo-sleep. He’s working on a way to wake her. Helping him along with that keeps him willing to work with us towards our own goals. But until she wakes up, he’s not doing anything to her.”

A chill ran through Steph, regardless of how comforting Nightwing was trying to be. “What’s he going to do with her once she wakes up?”

Nightwing shrugged. “He claims she’s his wife. I’m not going to speculate about what supposed husbands and wives do around a thirteen year old.”

Her stomach twisted a bit, so she puffed out her cheeks and crossed her arms before she realized he was trying to distract her by needling. And once she did realize that, in retribution, she kicked at Nightwing’s shin.

“Ow.”

“You deserved that.”

“Only a little bit."

She huffed and aimed another kick.

“Nope!” he leapt back. “You only get one free shot a night!”

“Bull!” She said, but found her shoulders relaxing back down again and some of the cold terror draining out of her spine. When she didn’t go after him again, Nightwing smiled, and she kept her arms crossed even as she slumped a bit. “Sorry about messing up the job.”

“You didn’t mess up the job.”

“I got him upset; we needed him to do… whatever it was you were hoping he’d do.” She looked away. “…are we going to help Nora?”

“We finished the job. He gave me some info. And yeah, Nora won’t be hurt.”

She could’ve looked for cracks in what he said. Tried to puzzle out if he were honestly telling the truth or trying to sidestep something by leaving a hint and twisting the rest. But she’d been with Batman for three months so far, and it’d been better than her life before had ever been, and she wanted to believe there was nothing she had to do to keep it _but_ believe. That she wouldn’t have to solve puzzles anymore.

“Okay.”

000

Batman and Tim were sparring when she arrived, Freeze’s manilla folder tucked under her arm.

Nightwing stole her headband on the eighth floor of Wayne tower, and returned it after giving a breathless report to Batman somewhere on the edges of Robinson Park. He dropped her off near the Bowery, gave a recap on how to navigate the tunnels there to reach the Northern tunnel entrance and the underground expressway they used to shorten the commute. Then he gave a lazy salute and was off.

It made sense for him to go—he was already far enough out of the way from the dockyards he wanted to go check on; it was bad enough without having to go all the way to the manor and back. He’d done it before, though—escorting her or Timmy all the way back to a Cave before heading out again—so it was actually sort of… cool? To be on her own all the way back to _the_ Cave?

The Cave was sort of cool, too, if you could get into it without a chaperone. Not that they weren’t constantly watched anyway, but sometimes it was just nice to be able to explore without having someone hovering over your shoulder and trying to herd you to one particular place. As much as the tunnels running under Gotham were a maze, the Bat’s Cave was a hall of wonders.

Batman and Tim were surely aware of her the minute she showed up in the garage, but they ignored her as Batman drilled Timmy on the tail end of a few moves. They seemed pretty preoccupied.

So Steph let them do that. In the meantime, she got to do what she wanted.

(It had been weird. The first day she’d been in the cave and realized they didn’t intend to kill her or keep her a prisoner forever. Weirder to start cautiously exploring the area. Because even though she tried to avoid riddles, tried to not deal with piecing things together unless she had to, there was still an innate curiosity that she could indulge if she wandered. Not searching, not looking for anything, but just—wandering. See something that looked interesting. Go check it out. Find the next interesting thing. Cool beans. Find something that didn’t quite look like it belonged.

Nora.)

She ducked under the T-Rex’s tail and gave its hind leg a pat, moving into the fabric dump. Kevlar, synthetic fiberglass weave, various paddings, woven steel, things that looked an awful lot like chainmail, that carbon nanotube weave Batman’d been experimenting with…

The Giant Penny was the only thing between that section and the med bay. There were huge vaults that were sealed up by steel doors the size of houses in their own right. Long wires ran across the cave’s ceiling and edges of the stone platforms, connecting to massive lamps, illuminating the shadows. There were guard railings and the sound of running water, because way far down below the lowest accessible stone platform was a waterfall with an electricity-generating water wheel, and Steph honestly kind of wondered how he’d installed everything without having to hire a team of professionals?

But the thought never got far, because between the med bay, giant penny, fabric dump, and Rex’s hindquarters, was a table.

And Red Hood had covered it in food.

Bless that crazy asshole.

He was squatting in front of the giant penny right then, facing the training area with his legs tucked up under him like a kid and a homemade burrito in hand, his helmet hooked on his knee. She helped herself to one of the many sandwiches laid out on the table, cut a slice of scalloped potatoes, dumped it all on a paper plate, and headed over to join him.

“You’re wonderful,” she said, plopping down crosslegged beside him with the plate in her lap. “Just wanna throw that out there.”

Jason snorted, taking a bit of his burrito and immediately talking around it.

“Continue.” He flicked his wrist a few times encouragingly.

“Your cooking is much better than Bruce’s,” she continued, “and your helmet is very shiny. But I’m going to stop talking now because I really want to eat something.”

He accepted that, definitely grinning as they ate together, watching Tim do that flip thing that he’d been having a lot of trouble with. Then Tim did it again. And again. Then he did it while trying to avoid Batman hitting him. Jason’s eyes didn’t leave them, only watching Steph out of his peripherals. Steph got fairly bored of watching the same thing over and over, though, and let her eyes wander around the cave again.

There was always something new to find if you just let your eyes wander. She wasn’t sure if it was because Batman added things to the cave without telling anyone, or if there was just that much junk in it.

There was a big ol’ pile of sharp objects that needed to be sorted next to the computer, along with a grindstone and polishing cloth. There was a creepy looking, white, ovalish mask she hadn’t noticed before, half-hidden behind a bust of Shakespeare on one of the bookcases they’d moved downstairs for easy access. The chore board at the foot of the stairs had shifted again—a little corkboard where they hung up little round pet-tags with signature colors to claim who’d be doing laundry, sharps maintenance, taking the trash to the incinerator: all the little things that made living in an underground bunker system bearable and feel weirdly like what she imagined summer camp might even feel like.

There was a hook for cooking duty, too, which Steph assumed was a relic from back when it was only Batman and Nightwing, because Hood just kept his token hung on that one all the time, and if someone wanted food when he wasn’t around, they just made it themselves. Steph was the only one who wasn’t exactly sure what to do in a kitchen, apparently. All the boys had apparently lived on their own for long enough that they’d been forced to learn a little something about cooking, but that just meant she didn’t have to learn how to make more than frozen waffles if she didn’t want to, and she was totally cool with that. Her brain hurt most nights from how much she was learning _without_ also learning how to make waffles from scratch.

(There was a demerits board as well, where they got assigned punishments like waxing the vehicles and vacuuming the cave and bunker hallways. Which was, shockingly, often assigned to whoever was benched at the minute. Steph was _so_ over cleaning the Cave. Let Tim have his turn.)

Off to the side of the chore board, _someone_ had gotten the vacuum cleaner out, set it up, and abandoned it beside a bucket and bottle of green windex in the space between Dick’s retired uniform and Jason’s tattered one, which had been in use so recently it hadn’t even gotten repaired.

“Nightwing ditch you?”

“Huh,” Steph said, halfway through her sandwich. She’d totally blanked there for a minute.

“Nightwing isn’t nagging me yet about posture. He send you back alone?” Jason said, removing the last of the wrapping from his burrito, now that it was getting down to the end and he wouldn’t have been able to take a bite without getting a mouthful of napkin.

She nodded, poking a bit at her potatoes. “He had something to do at the docks and sent me back.”

“He the only one out in Gotham right now, then?” Jason said, eyes darting away from Batman throwing Tim halfway across the room just for a moment.

Steph looked around. “…as long as there’s not another person I don’t know about?”

Jason shook his head. “Nah. Just us.”

He shoved the last of the burrito in his mouth, swallowed it probably a little faster than he should’ve, then got to his feet. “Bats needs to finish up, then. Love to watch him work, but however good blueballs is, we shouldn’t be a full hour between us if he’s in the field.”

At that point, Tim flew into a wall, and Batman called for a stop. Steph straightened up at the command. She set her plate to the side and hopped up onto her feet, peering around Jason to spy Batman with his cowl up, watching her and Hood while Tim picked himself up off the ground.

“Nightwing, you’re en-route?” the Bat said, hardly moving as he activated his com.

Stephanie might’ve been the only one who heard the reply, since she’d neglected to take out the com in her ear after entering the cave. Hood kept his com in the helmet and she didn’t think Tim had one in while training. “ _You kidding me? I’ve already got visual. What’s up?_ ”

“You sent Robin back.”

“ _Yeah, I mean, she’s not exactly prepped for this_.”

(Stephanie very much did not huff at that.)

“You’re the only operative currently active in Gotham.”

Nightwing made a sound that sounded mildly offended. “ _You’ve literally let me run off on my own for years doing this._ ”

Batman turned to Jason, who swiped his helmet off the floor and pulled it on a moment later, latching it with an evil-sounding hiss.

“Where to?” Jason said.

“Stick to the planned route,” Batman said, the com still active and buzzing his voice into Steph’s ear a split second after he spoke. “Keep all channels open in case Nightwing needs assistance.”

“ _Nightwing won’t need assistance_ ,” Nightwing said, clicking.

“Um,” Steph stepped forward. Batman and Red Hood both turned to look at her. (So did Tim, but he was so far melted into the shadows of the cave by now that it was only because she was almost used to it that she noticed him again.) “Nightwing said Red Hood was talking to informants tonight. Since I’m not supposed to be at the docks, I was thinking I could go with him, you know? Since I’m not benched?”

Hood turned towards Batman, clearly not about to vouch one way or another until the Bat had given his own opinion. And from the gash of a frown on his face, Steph wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I need a report from you about Freeze’s,” Batman said. Yep, Steph didn’t like that answer at all.

“But it’s hardly even midnight!” Steph said, picking up the manilla folder and brandishing it towards Batman like a sword. “I have plenty of time to give a report! And I can give an even _longer_ report if I go back out, right? Come on!”

She was pretty sure that her list of things Batman actually liked could also be expanded to include ‘reading paperwork.’ Because once she’d gotten her headband back from Nightwing and they’d paused on a rooftop so she could adjust it without the added danger of swinging through Gotham from multiple stories up with hair everywhere, one-handed? He’d given an oral report over the com. Batman didn’t even _need_ a second report, he already knew what happened, frozen lady and everything!

He probably just wanted to make Steph say it herself. Because he was a jerk. That was also on the list of things that she’d learned over the last few months: Batman was a huge jerk.

“No,” Batman said, voice flat. “You can join him on tomorrow’s rounds while Nightwing is away. Until then, report. Red Hood, disembark.”

Under his mask, Jason snorted, but at the same time he held up his hands and took a few steps back before actually turning and heading towards the garage.

“Just don’t spring something new on me when I get back,” he said as he went.

“Noted,” Batman said.

“But you don’t even need a report,” Steph said, ignoring the interruption. “You just _said_ ‘when Nightwing’s away,’ so it’s not like you forgot what he said over the com.”

“Your own take on your situations are important and your observational skills will be sharpened for it,” Batman said.

From halfway through the garage level, Red Hood shouted, “Don’t bother arguing with him! He’s a stubborn mule!” before starting a motorcycle.

Even though there was no way Batman hadn’t heard that, what with how loud it’d been, his only reply was a long-suffered sigh and a slight shake of his head. There really wasn’t any way Steph was wrangling out of this unless she stole a motorcycle herself and ran out, was there?

So she did the next best thing instead, and mimicked his sigh and head shake in the most dramatic way possible, puckering out her lips in an exaggeration of his frown and quietly accepting that the only audience who would appreciate her acting skills was currently hiding between a pair of stalagmites and totally hidden in shadow.

“Your report,” Batman said, unphased.

In her best impression of his growly voice, Steph told him about the night. Nightwing’s stealth training, seeing Freeze’s meatlocker of an apartment for the first time, letting Nightwing talk while she looked around and found Nora, which got the whole talk paused for a few minutes while Batman stressed the importance of paying attention to side conversations, which Steph quietly ignored because she may have grown up on Gotham’s streets, but she got the feeling Nightwing was the sort who his fold and she was _in it,_ now, so why shouldn’t she trust he was telling her the important stuff? He’d told her way more than what she’d heard once she’d kicked his butt over stealing her headband, anyway.

“Apparently, Freeze says there’s some metahuman biological research being done in Central’s S.T.A.R. labs,” she said, about five minutes into her report, and having recently given up on keeping her speech monosyllabic and Batman-y, since it was hurting her throat and not at all getting the responses she’d been hoping for. Not that she was totally sure what she’d been hoping for. Maybe at least expecting a reprimand for mockery? “When we got back out on the rooftops, Nightwing called dibs.”

“Why Central?” Batman said. Which caught Steph off guard a little. “The Austin S.T.A.R. lab in Texas specializes in metahuman studies.”

“Um, I don’t know, he didn’t say,” she said, shifting from one foot to another. Was this another test? Was she supposed to deduce something here? She wasn’t here for _puzzles_ — “Maybe Flash is involved?”

“A sound theory,” Batman said. He nodded for her to continue, apparently her guess having been deemed acceptable. Behind him, Timmy finally emerged from the shadows, sneaking behind Steph towards the snack table. She pretended she hadn’t seen him.

“Is it okay?” she said instead. Batman didn’t respond, and didn’t make any faces, so she figured that probably meant he wanted clarification. Would it kill the guy to say things aloud? Not all of them were psychic. “For Nightwing to go to a city protected by a hero, I mean. Isn’t that going to be dangerous?”

“We have protocols in place,” Batman said. And that was all he said. Until Steph crossed her arms and stared him down, adding a very drawn out, ‘liiiiike?’ a few moments later when he didn’t get the hint. “Rule of non-engagement. Minimal aggression. Unseen if possible. It is not our territory yet, and causing a commotion will only result in long-term damage.”

“How’s that actually translate into a policy?” Steph asked, raising an eyebrow and cocking her head in a way she’d seen Jason do when asking the Bat questions. Behind her, Timmy had broken away from the snack table and come to sit down near her feet, on the opposite side of her discarded plate. He nibbled at the crust of what looked like a whitebread tuna sandwich and stared up at them, watching the conversation. “I mean, I understand those words you used. Don’t give me that look, you were _definitely_ about to quote the dictionary at me!”

“It means,” Batman said, growl back in his voice and deadly serious, but with a twist to his lips that Steph was slowly learning meant he was pleased with something—which was. It was nice. To have someone be pleased when she said something— “that he is to avoid provoking the Justice League in any way possible, even if spotted. We cannot afford for them to pay us attention right now.”

“Now?” Tim said. Steph jumped. For as much as she’d known exactly where he was, it was still always a little shocking when he was so quiet and suddenly said something.

Batman turned and swept away, heading towards the computer terminal uphill from them in the cave as he responded: “And no time soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Character Poll: Superboy, Artemis, or Both?  
> (if you’ve already answered this on tumblr, please do not revote.) (poll will be running until the posting of chapter 7)
> 
> Batman plays the long game 
> 
> This whole chapter was finished and 30 pages long. And then it was a mess. So it was rewritten from scratch. Now I have a full two chapters for this one chapter. I miss my first chapter. It was a mess, but it was so beautiful. Most of what was cut was EVERYTHING but so much of Roy’s part was cut, I’m so heartbroken. Roy got cut, Steph’s first meeting with Nightwing was cut, Steph kicking Nightwing in the balls was cut… So much was lost in the pursuit of perfection.
> 
> The response to last chapter was phenomenal, I was totally blown away by the comments I got on it, but they also made me realize that there was no way the chapter immediately afterwards would be able to live up to it. I hope this one at least made something of a grade. Thank you all so much.
> 
> I’m… considering shifting things around a bit? On one hand, I really hate straight-up rewrite fics, and do not want those to be a thing that happens, but I’m also heavily considering trying to shift things towards the League and Team’s perspectives more (in no little part because everything in YJ gets so much creepier if you just pause to think about it for a few minutes, and I haven’t seen nearly enough fic exploring that, especially since this AU lacks what I shall call “the Batman buffer,” which is when proximity to Batman makes all other heroes look much better in comparison) Still working on how to balance things, but working on it. Again, any ideas for how things can go down or other advice is always welcomed. Thanks for sticking with me so far with this.
> 
> A Wally/Nightwing thingamadoodle is up next, and… Damian looks like he’s taking his sweet time, but he’ll show up. After a bang. However, because of my distress over the cuts, I have put a transcript of the Steph+Nightwing talk on the roof that Steph tells Batman about, as well as a snippet set for the very far future on criminalbatfam.tumblr.com , for the perusal of anyone who wants them. As of early November, they should both still be on the front page. Unless immediately after posting this I hit a crisis for next chapter. And have to complain about the age chart again. That age chart really messes me up.
> 
> Anyway! Recap: Extra snippets on the blog, vote for Artemis/Superboth/Both, and thank you again for reading and for leaving comments! Have a good one!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightwing spends most of his night trying to stop people from grabbing his ankles.

“You know,” Wally West said, hands on his hips as he surveyed his bedroom, “when I said it was really cool we were on a team and you all should say ‘hi’ anytime, I didn’t mean to imply I wanted you guys around _constantly_.”

Home Invader #1, codenamed Superboy, just grunted and continued to inspect the old movie and science posters plastered all over the wall. Home Invader #2, codenamed Artemis, just kicked her leg into the air again and flipped a page in the magazine she was reading on his bed, saying, “Too bad, bucko, you should’ve thought of that before you gave out the invite.”

“I didn’t even mean to my _house_ , I meant, like, if you wanted to go out and get—icecream or something! Or a coffee!” He threw his hands in the air.

Artemis arched a single eyebrow. It was a beautiful motion. “What, so we’re not allowed at your house now that it’s optional?”

Now, Wally had been attacked with ice a fair few times while fighting people like Captain Cold, or Icicle Jr., or any of the other freezy-people who for some reason never went into the shaved-ice business, and if Wally were asked to recreate the feeling of being stabbed in the chest with an icicle? He would’ve just asked Artemis to speak in the same tone she’d just used.

And despite himself, despite the part of himself that said he wasn’t just excited to be on a team so he’d have friends who weren’t busy with a self-imposed journey of proving their hero-ness, and that there were _loads_ of other reasons he wanted to keep in contact during off-hours, Artemis’ tone still made him—

“No! No. Not what I meant at all.” He waved his hands frantically, hoping Home Invader #1 wasn’t as insulted as Artemis. Wally glanced at Conner, who was looking lost and confused about the conversation, but also vaguely pissed about it. “Don’t gang up on me or twist my words that way. Jeez. I just—don’t usually hang out in my house?”

Wally reflected that, maybe, at some point, he should’ve explained to the League that his parents weren’t… _pro_ -metahuman.

It wasn’t that he was in danger of being kicked out, or that his parents were bad people, or that they didn’t love him. It wasn’t _anything_ like that.

It was just, sometimes a pundit would come on T.V. and say some things about extra-powered individuals. It didn’t matter whether it was about aliens, or metahumans, or Atlanteans, or Amazons; Wally wouldn’t be able to look at his parents, and they wouldn’t be able to look at him, and then the atmosphere in the living room would get all tense and uncomfortable until someone either left or the T.V. person moved on to a different topic.

When Wally’s parents were growing up, the only superheroes they’d ever heard about were World War Two vets, and the ones who kept being heroes after the war were—public? Secret identities weren’t really as big a thing? Either clearly mutants, clearly the result of a lab, and billed as super soldiers? And by the mid 50s, they were all either dead or pretty well retired. Jay Garrick still ran through Central and Keystone, but it wasn’t a career by any stretch. It wasn’t as part of a group. It wasn’t every night. It wasn’t a lot of things, but mostly, it wasn’t anything like what Flash and Kid Flash did nowadays. _And_ it wasn’t in Nevada. Where Wally’s parents had grown up.

Aliens weren’t real. Atlantis was a popular myth. Themyscira wasn’t even a _thing_. It was a whole new world now, and he totally didn’t blame his parents for being kinda freaked out! It wasn’t like they were _mean_ about it, or that they didn’t love him, or that they didn’t try to understand, or that they weren’t proud he was helping people, it was just, well—

…Wally just wasn’t exactly sure why the League thought his family would make a good halfway house.

It’d been fine with Atremis and her mom, all things considered—it’d taken the Crocks a little while to get things sorted in Gotham enough to make the move all legal and natural and low-key (which disappearing in the middle of the night was decidedly _not_ ), so the Wests had a while to prepare for them. They’d just had to spend a couple of days of housing an ex-costumed villain and her didn’t-want-to-kill-people daughter, both of whom were totally one-hundred percent human, so hey, giving them somewhere to stay while they tried to move was a cool and definitively noble cause!  
  


Wally’s parents had been okay having Roy over, too, even in non-emergency situations. Whether it was having Roy over for sleepovers, or just grabbing dinner with the fam, because Green Arrow was out for the night, and Roy hadn’t been invited along but didn’t want to be all alone in the house. Roy hadn’t been by in months, and Wally let his parents draw their own conclusions about that—but Roy had been fully human, fully aware of politeness, and even if he was a huge grump, he always made a point to compliment the cooking and kept any whining about vigilantism to Wally’s bedroom.

So Superboy had been his parents’ first metahuman guest, barring Uncle Barry and Mr. Garrick, neither of whom _really_ counted.

Because when Wally and Roy and Kaldur found Superboy in Cadmus’ basement? That’d kind of been an emergency situation. It was short notice, and if Superman wasn’t taking Superboy home with him, then none of the other adult Leaguers were comfortable taking him in Superman’s place. Superboy didn’t really seem keen to go with any of the adult strangers, anyway. The Wests were already setup for guests, what with prepping the Crocks’ stay, so. Haha?

The Crocks were way better guests than Superboy, though. Largely because of having names that didn’t sound like aliases, combined with a thorough understanding of air-mattresses.

Three months of integration, with one of those months involving school, had made Conner a _very_ different person to be around. Not just because he had another name, now, so Wally didn’t have to go around pretending ‘Supey’ didn’t sound like ‘soupy,’ on the ‘definitely a normal name’ scale, but also because Conner now had a vague idea of how to behave around people who weren’t out to use him as a kill-bot.

But that first month, the July from hell? It had taken a week for the League to agree to their terms and set up Mt. Justice again. A _week_. Wally’d been Supey’s primary caregiver and a one-man welcoming committee to Normal Life during the same week he’d been experiencing a surge of over-protectiveness, trying to pretend he wasn’t keeping one ear to the ground for Roy’s location, helping watch over the Crocks in case assassins showed up while also half having them live at his house and half helping them move, _and_ waiting for any sign that Aqualad wasn’t being banished back to Atlantis for insubordination, which also meant having a half-cocked one-man-rescue-mission plan, just in case. Which was really difficult to plan out when he had to admit part of the rescue mission would probably take place underwater, where he couldn’t breathe, and running was difficult. And he was only an okay-ish swimmer. And his only planned safehouse was also his real house, where, _again_ , parents uncomfortable with Atlanteans, and Uncle Barry had a spare key.

And Conner’s wellbeing had been totally dependant on _that_ for an _entire week._

So like hell was he going to act surprised that the kid had apparently imprinted on him, and like _hell_ was he going to throw Conner out the window after, yeah, okay, explicitly stating that he’d like it if people said ‘hello’ occasionally outside of missions. Wally’d given out his civilian I.D. on the first day, knowing full-well that one of his team members had been an assassin in training. Because Roy was a disappearing jerk, and Wally’d just gotten handed the afterschool club of his dreams, and _damnit_ — none of that made the situation any better.

None of it really made Wally comfortable having to explain why, exactly, he was uncomfortable having powered folks and vigilantes in his house. Or, not uncomfortable, but maybe a little bit worried that his mom’s eagle-like hearing would wake her up, even if it was, like, _way_ late and both his folks were long in bed. As much as they tried to be understanding and compassionate, his parents were still like they were, and they wouldn’t handle it well if they came upstairs in the middle of the night and found his room filled with one third ex-assassin and one third baby alien clone.

He didn’t want to stress the people he loved anymore. He didn’t want to stress about the reactions of people he loved anymore. He wanted to just admit that people were the way they were, and nothing he said or did was going to change that, unless they decided to change themselves, so maybe he could just be at _peace_ with it all, and—

“Where are we going, then?” Conner said, snapping Wally’s attention back to the room. His thoughts fast-forwarded a moment, taking an instant to realign with reality. Inside his head, it was enough time for a nice breather to steady himself and admit he had no idea what Supey meant by that.

“What?” he said, very honestly. He wasn’t entirely sure how fast his thoughts had been going. Sometimes he zoned out and found hours had passed. Sometimes, it was only a second or two.

“You don’t usually hang out in your house,” Artemis sniped the conversation back, “So where to, Kid Fidget?”

Wally looked down. Yeah, okay, he was tapping his foot really fast. He stopped that. “I dunno. There’s not exactly much open right now. I was sort of thinking we could hang out during the _day_ or something. I usually patrol some at night, when Tornado isn’t assigning us to babysitting.”

Finally, Artemis’ groan was in his favor. “Yeah, I get that—do you think he just has them, I don’t know, listed or something? Like, he has a whole database of the most boring missions possible and throws them out to keep us busy?”

Wally snorted and crossed his arms, tension draining out of his shoulders as things settled into something that had hints of a normal conversation. “Sure feels like it sometimes. I’ve definitely had way more dangerous nights just walking home on my own. I mean, that thing with the, with the, _dolphins?_ I mean, I’m glad there’s one less watershow place that’s not abusing their animals, but they’re saddling us with—”

“—kiddie shit. It’s kiddie shit,” Artemis said, shifting on the bed so she was propped up against the headboard, nodding along, one foot ticking back and forth irritably.

“I liked the dolphins,” Conner said, in the tone of voice that meant, ‘I’m not sure how to contribute but I am paying attention to the conversation,’ even though he was still torn between watching Artemis, watching Wally, and glancing out the window over Central City’s darkened suburbs.

“Yeah, it sucked that the League wouldn’t let us adopt one,” Wally said, lancing his fingers behind his head and stretching. “Sorry about that, Supey.”

“Kaldur looked disappointed, too,” Artemis added, grinning. “You could’ve been the proud, super hot parents of a wonderful dolphin baby.”

“No they could not.” Wally leveled a flat look at her with what he hoped was a clear _stop trying to give him ideas_ vibe as a side dish.

“The pool’s too small for a dolphin,” Conner said, though, his tone dull again. “It would have to be at least four times larger to safely inhabit even a baby dolphin. The only place they would have been able to be kept would be in the cove, which is both too shallow and too cold for the species showcased.”

“You sound less and less like you’re vomiting a dictionary every day, dude,” Wally said, sprinting over to give him a quick shoulder-hug. “I’m real proud.”

He zipped back to his spot before Conner could shove him there. And then he winced when he remembered he was trying very hard to not wake his parents, and rapid footsteps, no matter how quiet, were probably not the best way to go about that. “Uh, hey. Supey. You mind doing me a favor if you’re not too busy being grumpy at me? Can you just, I don’t know, give us a heads-up if my folks start waking? I want you two out the window if they do, by the way.”

He took the grumble and unhappy staring out the window as agreement, even as Artemis said, “Paranoid, much?”

  
“You have no room to talk,” Wally said, crossing his arms and huffing.

“No, I guess I don’t, since I have completely legitimate reasons to be looking over my shoulder constantly,” she said lightly, eyes flicking back down to her magazine. He was pretty sure she wasn’t actually reading at this point, and had just brought it along so she didn’t have to look at him, but that still left the question of _why_ she’d come to his room at all. And without using the front door. And with Conner?

“Why did you both decide to come to my place again, exactly?” he asked. “I feel like I missed something. I mean, if it was Roy, I’d totally understand, but neither of you are…”

He trailed off just before putting his foot too far in his mouth. Because not even _he_ was going to tell Sportsmaster’s daughter or Superman’s clone that they weren’t having ‘parent problems,’ even if he didn’t mean it the way he knew they would hear it.

“….aaaaare?” Artemis said, eyes flicking up again to watch him slowly implode.

“…sad redheads?” Wally shrugged helplessly. “We may or may not have a sad redhead support group? That meets in my room? Unnanoucned? Sometimes? Don’t tell anyone else.”

Artemis snorted, and may or may not have been laughing at him. Haha, he was so not about that. “I was just bored. He was bored. M’gann was off doing some weird alien thing with J’onn. Kal goes into the ocean at night. You opened the window when we knocked at it. Now we’re here.”

“That’s a riveting story that explains everything,” Wally said, huffing and hooking his thumbs in his pockets.

“Yeah, you’re such a skilled conversationalist yourself,” Artemis said. “So, seriously, are we going out or what?”

“I don’t—” Wally began, then groaned, dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Ugh. Fine. Just—”

Just when Wally was about to ask Supey for a status report on his parent’s being asleep-ness, Conner stiffened and looked out the windows in a way that was way too sharp and mechanical to be casual. It kinda reminded Wally of a bloodhound.

“Did you hear that?” Conner said, eyes fixed at some point in the distance.

“Hear what?” Wally and Artemis said at the same time.

“Jinx!” Wally said immediately. Artemis rolled her eyes and fixed him with a look. He pouted. Conner carried on, unperturbed.

“It sounded like explosions,” he said, which definitely got Wally and Artemis’ attention back.

“I’d like to think I’d have noticed explosions,” she said. Wally nodded, jogging (in half a moment) to his desk where a small T.V. set lived. One hand swiped up the remote, turned on the T.V., muted the volume, and pushed in the numbers for the local 24-hour news channel almost faster than the set could handle. With his other hand, he pulled his cellphone out of his jeans to check his newsfeed and a few twitter tags.

“Welp, if it was an explosion too far away for us to hear or see, no one’s said anything yet,” he reported, eyes still scanning the information as fast as it could load. High-speed connections were sort of a must. Before the explosion, his family’d had dial-up internet. It was horrible. “Was it within city limits, Conner?”

He changed patterns, focusing his eyes up on Conner and only glancing down to read a few dozen incoming tweets every few seconds, instead of the other way around. He was rewarded with seeing Conner put on one of his constipated faces and then give a sharp nod. “I’m sure.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be able to pinpoint where it came from, would you?” Artemis asked, rolling off Wally’s bed and crouching on the floor to unzip the dufflebag she’d brought along.

“I think so,” Conner said, nodding sharply again. His jaw was tight and he had his arms crossed across his chest like he was trying to hug himself, but Wally wasn’t going to bug him about being tense right now.

“Are you implying you’re going to go investigate my city?” Wally said instead, raising an eyebrow and watching Artemis pull out her bow and mask. Apparently, even if she hauled her gear out on social visits, it didn’t mean she was gonna get fully dressed in Wally’s room. Sad days. He woulda offered a bathroom to change in if she’d asked, but the sharp way she tugged her ponytail tight and jerked her mask on told him he was probably better off keeping his mouth shut.

“Isn’t that what vigilantes are supposed to do?” she said, looking up at him once the mask was fully on, eyes narrowed. “Run off in the middle of the night, chasing weird explosions and being dumb?”

“Duh,” Wally said as she readied her bow. Damn. He missed Roy. “It’s just weird having someone else in my city.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said, securing her quivers and strapping a collapsible crossbow to her leg overtop her shorts. She looked totally mercenary. “I didn’t exactly grow up in a vigilante town, unless you count when like five of them showed up at my doorstep all at once.”

“Hey! Me, Roy, and Kaldur were not at your doorstep,” he said, sniffing a bit. “We were across the street, _staring_ at your doorstep.”

“You’re a real charmer, you know that, Kid?”

He bowed low, and only straightened when Superboy cleared his throat at them. “Are we going, yet?”

“You know, Supey,” Wally said, changing into his uniform at a little slower than the speed of sound, ruffling all the papers in his room, “You are a real hardass for someone who’s only been doing this for a few months. Just remember to unlock my window before you try to open it, okay?”

Superboy grunted and unlocked Wally’s window obediently before sliding it up and disappearing onto the rooftop, Artemis a half-step behind him. Wally climbed out last, thinking they’d both gotten clear. Instead, when he turned to grab onto the drainpipe to guide his descent onto the street, he came face-to-face with Artemis, her face shadowed and sharp in the dark.

“Augh!”

Speedsters were not made for rooftops. Rooftops and climbing out windows were delicate operations that were _not_ something speedsters were naturally inclined to. At all. Between the startle of finding a face in the dark where he’d expected a drain pipe and his already iffy footing, he nearly fell off his roof. Which was for some reason much more embarrassing than the thought of falling off someone _else’s_ roof.

At the last moment, legs flailing, he managed to snag the sill of his window with both hands. So he hung off his roof, half-dangling, with his stomach pressed to the tiles. Super cool. “Um.”

Artemis edged closer and stared him down just long enough to let him know she was really enjoying this. Then, she took out her cellphone and snapped a picture.

_I have been doing this longer than anyone else on this team_ , he thought in his head, very loudly. M’gann wouldn’t have ever been able to ignore his thoughts if she were here, he thought them so loud. _I am literally the most experienced person here. Both of you are younger than me. You weren’t supposed to_ be _there when I came out. It could’ve happened to anyone. This is not that funny!_

But he couldn’t say any of that out loud because it would just make this situation even worse than it already was. So he just grumbled out curse words, and prayed the picture she took turned out horrible.

Stupid assassins. Stupid child soldier training. Stupid hope that this team was going to be anything but an exercise in patience. Stupid, thinking this year was going to be anything but stress.

Artemis spoke in a whisper, but between being as close to Wally as she was and Superboy’s super-hearing, both heard it perfectly well. “Catch this bozo before he hits the ground, okay?”

“Okay,” Superboy said in his normal-volume voice.

“This is gonna suck,” Wally said.

“Then suck it up,” said Artemis. “Am I gonna have to whack your fingers off the frame, or are you gonna go patrol your city willingly?”

“Kill me now,” Kid Flash said, closing his eyes. Then, he let go.

000

There were a couple downsides to being Richard Grayson.

Not many, but a couple.

For example, there was the downside of one of his potential nicknames being, ‘Richie.’ There was a tangential downside to that, where everyone who was unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the nickname ‘Dick’ automatically opted towards ‘Richie’ instead, until they were corrected. Then came the inevitable questions of _why_ he wanted to be called ‘Dick’ rather than ‘Richie.’ Aside from how rude it was to ask someone why they wanted to be called their name, he just wanted to avoid the sheer, painful, blunt irony of being called ‘Richie’ while having a billionaire for a guardian. A painful, blunt irony which was infinitely worse than being called ‘Dick’ while having an alleged playboy for a guardian. He had reached that conclusion while also factoring in his high school sophomore experience, in case anyone doubted his resolve.

Other downsides to being Richard Grayson, charming ward of billionaire businessman and minor celebrity, Bruce Wayne?

It was really hard to go out in public on his own without being recognized. Even if he weren’t recognized in person, all it would take was one stray cellphone picture, an inattentive tourist’s camera, or a quick selfie uploaded to the internet, and, inevitably, someone would say, ‘hey, doesn’t that guy in the background look like Richard Grayson?’

He knew for a _fact_ that other billionaires’ kids didn’t have to put up with that kind of stuff.

Being a celebrity sucked, even just being a minor celebrity. That was a very broad statement, and he had lots of qualifiers to add—being a minor celebrity _especially_ sucked when (he filled in the blank with various personal identifiers he didn’t particularly talk about to anyone), and he had no idea how the big names did it.

Still, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t really blame Bruce for any of it—polarized hometown, high profile murders, vanished for seven years, get declared ‘presumed dead’ only to return and reclaim the family business and fortune? Even if most of the chaos of Dick’s guardianship proceedings were overshadowed by a swathe of local assassinations and supposed terrorist attacks, Bruce Wayne’s abbreviated history could’ve fed gossip rags and conspiracy websites for years. And then you factored in the playboy image.

There were at least three requests for reality T.V. shows whose existence would bank entirely on Bruce selling out his underage ward’s privacy, not to mention the innumerable interview requests and proposed book deals. Really, unless they got another alien invasion in the next half-decade, it seemed like the reporting on every move the Wayne household made would remain popular for a while.

Which, again, Dick didn’t really blame Bruce for that, especially since the charade started way before they met—but geez, it made breaking and entering so much more difficult.

_Really_ , he thought, activating the portable holographic computer in his glove’s wrist and looping video feeds, turning off all the building’s alarm systems and security alerts he could access from outside the building. Praise Wayne Tech for having a finger in every pie. No need for stupid risks. Just pure sabotage. _Jason could’ve just gone on a daytime tour of the place, dropped a few cameras off, wandered out with the rest of the crowd, and no one’d be the wiser._

But Jason was a Gotham kid in a way Dick had never been and never planned on being. Jason functioned best there, and stuck out like a sore thumb anywhere else. Crazy kid was pretty well determined to die in Gotham. Dick could respect that. Dick didn’t have to do it himself, though. He liked to travel. If traveling gigs came along, they were his, since outside of Wayne functions, Bruce was almost as bad at leaving Gotham as Jason was. _Almost_.

Now that they had Steph and Tim, hypothetically _they_ could take travel jobs, but Steph and Tim were still on the learning curve. Too untrained and young-looking to try and pull off the civilian theft, and, pleased as he was with their growth, Dick wasn’t about to let them fly halfway across the country to potentially mess up. If they needed to be bailed out, he’d rather do it close to home, and Bruce agreed so thoroughly that the idea of sending them off hadn’t even been brought up when planning it all out.

So this was Nightwing’s gig.

So he didn’t have the Nightwing suit on right now! So Nightwing didn’t put on appearances outside Gotham. Whatever. Still Nightwing. Still his gig.

The dark blue body armor he had on currently was an unfinished replacement costume, set aside in case his current Nightwing gear got wrecked. It was finished enough to be functional, effective, and hard-to-spot. He’d slung a dark brown jacket on overtop, even though Missouri’s September nights still had nothing on a Gotham chill, because at first glance it’d make him look like just another guy in a jacket, rather than a guy in a costume who’d forgotten to get his detailing done—the lower body armor could pass for fashion statement pants. Dick would know. He’d lived as a socialite kid for long enough to spot a statement a mile away.

Yeah, wearing a different outfit than usual was weird, and it would’ve been so much simpler if he could’ve just slipped in with a tour during work hours to scout the place out and not have to worry about how many cameras saw his face, but, hey. Simple was boring.

‘Boring’ was not a word Nightwing ever entertained for very long.

Security alerts crippled, pressure sensors offline, cameras looped. All he had to do now was what he did best.

S.T.A.R. Lab’s Central City branch was a huge, circular building, with many interior levels and floor-to-ceiling windows. There was one back door with an actual external lock and keypad on it, and that had been his original entrance plan. The wrench was thrown into that when it turned out the lock was busted, but someone’d had the foresight to jam something very heavy and solid against the door, probably intending to just go in the front the next morning. Something that heavy pressed that flush up against the interior of the door was not something Nightwing would be able to replicate, so Plan A was out. Nightwing was also definitely a little too big for this place’s airvents, which were much more modern than most of Gotham’s, and therefore only a few inches wide. He preferred to leave those as a last resort, regardless.

It was luck that the architect designing the labs had installed skylights. They were small enough he had a good chance of being able to shift the glass without dropping or breaking anything. Unsealing the glass from where it was set into the building took some doing, but two or three tries, wax, string, localized explosives, and handheld blowtorches did a guy a world of good.

He waited out of sight for several minutes, just to make sure anyone attracted by the sound had enough time to wander off again, before moving on.

A singed glove and a few well-placed pieces of duct tape later, and he’d shifted the skylight the whole foot-and-a-half he’d need to make his entrance and exit. From within, even if a guard walked directly beneath the skylight, they’d be hard pressed to notice an edge of the missing glass.

It would’ve been a lot easier to just shatter the skylight and damn the consequences, but, well. Sometimes easy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

(In a way, vigilante heroes had it easy. If _they_ busted a window? ‘Oh, sorry officer, I was just trying to stop a robbery in process.’ Nightwing? Had to rely on no one having good enough eyes to notice there was an additional tiny line half an inch in from the perimeter of one of the skylights. He’d have to shift the glass back in place and put some clear sealant over the separation on his way out, so the break-in wouldn’t be noticed the first time it rained.)

He glanced around one last time before rolling his shoulders, gauging the drop distance, and taking the plunge. He landed quietly on the floor below.

Central’s S.T.A.R. Lab was honestly a really large building, and it only felt bigger from the inside. Tall windows, taller ceiling, with a gray tile-patterned floor and a clinical cleanliness that surely left an impression on the tourists, maybe a greater impression than the actual technology did.

Plain seating areas, currently-abandoned coffee kiosk, and various fliers and posters pinned to corkboards announcing lectures, advertising experiments to participate in. Clearly, the place had been working on building relations with the community and probably brought in local college students as often as possible; that in itself was helpful with navigation, since among the many fliers on the corkboard, there was also a laminated map on a piece of printer paper, detailing the rooms and routes of the floor.

Sometimes, easy was okay.

The light coming in from the city was more than enough to let him read. He’d gotten the floorplan from Batman—from Robin, technically. Timmy Robin—and memorized it, but it was always nice to have a refresher and point of reference. Kind of cool to compare his mental image and the map on the wall, noticing where some rooms had been omitted or left unlabeled.

His destination could be reached from multiple floors. The first entrance he wanted was a mezzanine level. Glass enclosure. Soundproof, bulletproof, probably-a-few-other-things proof. Not Nightwing proof, though. The lock on the door was a scanner and keypad. A few seconds hooked up to his glove and the door slid right open without so much as a hiss. He closed it again behind himself, just in case a night guard or janitor happened by.

The mezzanine level was fairly simple, mostly made up of various seating arrangements and a sole computer console.

Which he bugged.

He bugged the hell out of that room and that computer console. The security cameras he paid no mind to—if no one had already come and tried to halt him by now, no one had noticed his efforts on the system—but the speaker system, he hid audio bugs nearby. The computer he planted a small, subtle virus in. The chairs, he bugged the underside of. The vents? Best place for bugs and transmitters.

In and out. Five minutes, max. Less than that, even, if he had to bet. He was out the door and locking it again in no time before heading down another two levels to reach his second objective: the main testing room.

  
Freeze hadn’t been exaggerating when he said there was some sort of research being done on metahumans at the Central S.T.A.R. lab. The main testing room was massive, surely one of the largest rooms in the building, and completely covered in wires and screens. The place was as sterile as the rest of the labs, but in an odd, messy sort of way, where everything was undeniably _uncontaminated,_ but appeared to be so in the most frantic fashion possible. There were choppy, multicolored printed pages lying on several desks; sterile white computer chairs and computer consoles all lined up in rows. A massive server system, completely cut off from the outside world. The only way information left this room was on external harddrives or paper. Not even exploiting Wayne Tech could help if the system never connected to anything they could reach.

He started right away, locating the main server, snapping an audio bug and transmitter under the center of the table it rested on, and planting his virus. Next, he’d (plant more bugs in the room as insurance, then spent a few minutes checking for and removing any sign he was ever here. He’d head back upstairs and spend a while replacing the skylight, making sure the glaze was drying properly while resetting the cameras, alerts, and sensors. From there, it was a ten mile hike outside city limits to where the batwing was hidden. It was a small plane, almost the size of a supercub, and more than capable of making short-distance takeoff and landings, but the flight home would be several hours. No sleeping, because even if he engaged autopilot, it was a bad idea to trust it completely. Sleep would wait until he was back home, then he’d maybe get about eight hours if he woke up by ten on Sunday. Check on kids. There was a lunch, then fencing reporters, the grand opening at two, another press conference, an after-party dinner where he’d have to find a date and be out of the date’s hair by midnight. Check kids. He could get six hours minimum sleep before school on Monday. When his biology project was due. _Hell._ )

He shook his head and refocused. He’d clean up here and head home. In and out. Easy.

The virus was in, the batcave transmitter set up, and computer back in its dormant state. He had a few more small, attachable bugs in his hand, and was ready to hide throughout the room when a sound gave him pause.

Like running feet—footsteps—much faster than they should’ve been. By the time he’d registered the thought and made to dive behind a desk, the door to the lab was sliding open.

“Huh,” the figure said, absently, speaking to the room at large. He zipped inside before the door had even fully opened. “You know, most robbers don’t actually bother with the mask? Most of them either have a ol’ big costume or _just_ street clothes. Not any weird in-between thing.”

The figure was hard to see in the dark; tall, stance assured, hip cocked out. Nightwing responded instinctively: by opening his mouth.

“Well, to be fair, most of the time people don’t see me, so I can understand the confusion.” The words were out before he could even pretend he’d vetted them. Very carefully, he gave a little tug at the edge of his jacket to make sure it was still firmly zipped up and not about to fly open and be a hindrance, or reveal the whole of his body armor. Witnesses were _not_ part of the plan. Hell, anyone knowing he’d ever been there at all wasn’t part of the plan. No plan survived first contact, but he was really hoping at least that part would.

The vigilante—one of the Flashes, no doubt, though it was too dark to make more than a guess at which one; but _how_ had he known?—let out a startled laugh and rested his hands on his hips, clearly confident in his position. “Huh. Okay then. Well, I’m gonna give you points for not trying to make up some dumb reason why you’re wearing a mask in a dark lab in the middle of the night, but now’s about the time I arrest you, cool? Cool.”

Then, with a rustle of papers, he was moving.

“Hey, now! That hardly seems fair,” Nightwing said, leaping up onto one of the desks rather than risking being caught flat-footed by a Flash. He twisted to leap again, aiming for higher ground. A hand grabbed his ankle, but the grip was weak. He flipped backwards, clocking the vigilante on the chin with his other foot. Despite the dim light, at such a close range, Dick could finally see the coloring and details of his assailant’s costume. “You’ll have to step up your game if you want an even playing field, Kid Flash.”

One handspring and a flip later, he’d found a secondary perch up on one of the pieces of testing equipment—a treadmill set up on a platform, by the looks of it—and locked onto Kid Flash’s location once again, just in time to see the vigilante regain his balance and look up at him.

“‘Step up,’ _ha._ Can’t blame a guy for making assumptions, right?” Kid Flash rubbed his chin, grinning. “I thought you’d feel better about getting taken down by a guy you could see moving, but I guess you weren’t _just_ bragging when you said you were good.”

“I was bragging maybe a little bit,” Nightwing admitted from his perch, watching for any giveaway twitch to indicate Kid Flash would move again. “But only a little bit.”

“That little bit’s gonna cost ya!” Kid Flash moved.

This time, he really lived up to his name. Kid Flash was up on the perch and punching at Nightwing before he could even put a guard up.

Kid Flash, Nightwing learned, was not very good at punching.

Oh, it hurt! A punch with that much momentum was hard to turn away from, and it hurt when it landed! But there wasn’t a lot of muscle behind it, and the firmness and intent to harm just wasn’t there. But there were a lot of punches. All too fast to effectively dodge.

Plenty of chances for a grip.

Nightwing’s lip was swollen and his balance being tested, but one incredibly fast blow glanced just over the surface of his chest, right where his hands were in waiting. He caught the fist. Kid Flash was still for just a moment in surprise, and that moment was all Nightwing needed to fix his weight and find the leverage to send Kid Flash flying.

“Good luck!” Nightwing called as the vigilante soared, grinning despite his busted lip. He took to the air a moment later. There wasn’t much he could do for high ground in the lab—but the outside of the mezzanine viewing area was across the room from him, and the edge had just enough of a protrusion that he’d be able to get a grip. Seemed as good a place to head for as any, at the moment.

Kid Flash landed badly. He managed rolling sloppily back onto his feet, but leaned heavily to one side. It looked like his hip had been taken the brunt of the fall, which wasn’t the worst place to take it—he’d be able to push through an injury like that fairly easily without risking further harm, so the limp was temporary. Time to make the most of it.

“Think you can catch me?” Nightwing shouted, leaping off his current platform towards the mezzanine at the far end of the room, scanning the area for something to his advantage as he went. In his peripherals, he saw Kid Flash shift into a running position.

“You think you wanna say that to someone like me?” Kid Flash said, but his voice was off. More excited than it probably should’ve been when fighting an unknown. He was enjoying this.

Dick was grinning, too, he realized. And it wasn’t—it wasn’t the sort of grin that he put on to frighten people, or to reassure his partners, or to spite everything that’d tried to take any reason he’d ever had to smile. He didn’t have a reputation here. Nightwing had nothing to uphold. There was no reason to grin. This didn’t feel like habit, though, it was—this was kind of fun. “I think you shouldn’t say stuff like that until you’ve actually got me!”

The tight space of the middle lab was not a very good place for running at any fast clip. With his bright costume, even in the dark, Kid Flash was traceable by sight. Not that keeping away from him was any easy feat, regardless. He didn’t seem to have much compunction about running into things, even if he tried to overleap and sidestep most obstacles. But even his slightest hesitations gave Nightwing a place to kick out and keep the speedster back. Kid Flash’s pace was stuttering. He must’ve realized by now that tripping or grabbing Nightwing wasn’t going to work, and getting in too close for too long was only going to get him thrown again. He didn’t bother going for bindings. Either Kid Flash didn’t have handcuffs or plastic ties, or he’d gotten the idea that Nightwing wasn’t about to let even the force of momentum get his hands close enough together for restraints to be useful.

Then, near the center of the room, Nightwing spotted what he was looking for.

He wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it was what he was looking for.

A small device, clearly being worked on by whoever’s desk that belonged to. Surrounded by a few screws and circuits, tape and tack. It was small enough to hold in his hand, but Nightwing scooped it up with a ‘whoop!’ and stuffed it in his pocket instead, hoping it wouldn’t fall out.

Kid Flash swerved towards him, dodging the desks and kicked up papers and gears, only to come to a skidding stop trying to grab Nightwing’s ankles and trip him up again. Instead, Kid Flash slammed into the wall. Nightwing laughed, kicking off the wall and flipping over Kid Flash’s head, landing safely behind his back.

“Road runner verses bird who can _actually_ fly! Round two! Go!” Without giving the hero any more time to recover, Nightwing bolted for the door. He had enough time between Kid Flash’s recovery to shut the heavy metal between them and shove one hand in his pocket to make sure the stolen device—whatever it was—wouldn’t fall out as he ran.

The shut door bought him just enough time to activate the tracker in his gauntlet. He raced down the hall, slapping every elevator call button he passed. He couldn’t outrun a speedster—that was hopefully a given—but he could delay and divert the poor guy until it hardly mattered anymore. If Kid Flash saw an elevator door closing, he’d at least have to pause long enough to make sure Nightwing wasn’t inside, and tight corners didn’t seem to agree with him very well. With any luck, he’d actually stumble inside a closing door and have to waste precious seconds getting out.

When it came to fighting speedsters, breaking up their momentum was the most important thing. No matter how fast someone could run, it still took a lot to stop and start again continuously, and momentum wasn’t _always_ a speedster’s friend.

When by happenstance he passed an elevator that actually opened up immediately, he made a split second decision on the assumption that after the first three elevators, Kid Flash would assume all the opened doors were red herrings, and that trying to hide the skylight entrance was a bit of a lost cause, now. He ducked inside the elevator, pressed for the entrance level, hoisted himself into one of the top corners by the door, and waited.

Two miraculous things proceeded to happen. The first was the discovery that Kid Flash apparently did not believe in red herrings. He came racing into the elevator a moment after Nightwing took his perch, glancing around. The second miraculous thing was that, in Kid Flash’s frantic glancing around, he _looked up_.

“Oops,” Nightwing said as Kid Flash’s grew wide behind his goggles. “Sorry about this.”

He landed on Kid Flash’s face, backflipped from the impact, stuck the landing on the ground, and vaulted out of the elevator a moment before the doors slid shut. Back to Plan A.

He bolted down the hall, looking for a utility staircase and hoping to make it to the top floor before Kid Flash could make it out of the elevator.

It would be a whole nother ballgame if Dick could just trip the speedster, pin him down, and fight in his own way, but—

Well. He wasn’t about to bring the whole Justice League down on Bruce’s head over a few metahuman studies. And that meant lasting damage was off the table. Even if this _was_ bringing up memories of the last time he’d faced down a speedster, and those memories were tied up in Maronis, and _those bastards—_

“You know,” Kid Flash’s voice broke through the sharp, dangerous clarity that had started infecting Nightwing’s mind. His hackles settled back down and the grin returned, easy on his face. He’d only gotten one floor up and was barely near the next staircase. “It is really rude to leave someone hanging like that.”

Kid Flash’s bodycheck sent him sprawling. He crashed against the window. “Augh!”

He scrambled to get his balance back even as he gasped air back into his lungs. Not good. Hallways were definitely not where he wanted to have this fight.

A fist to the jaw and swipe from the ankles knocked him down again, just as a beam of bright moonlight came through the clouds. The vigilante was right on top of Dick, giving him far too good a look at Dick’s masked features.

“Wha—you’re just a kid!” he said, eyes widening.

Dick blinked up at him. “…says the guy called _Kid_ Flash _?_ ”

He kneed Kid Flash in the gut maybe a littler harder than he’d meant to. Gah. The things you had to put up with when you left your city behind.

While Kid Flash doubled over in shock, Dick dug into his belt for a bomb. It was small, black, bat shaped, and stuck easily on the glass of the window. It all took about two seconds—enough time left to shove Kid Flash across the hall.

“Sorry!”

Nightwing activated the shortest timer and hurtled himself away from the window just as the warning beeps began to get dangerous.

He’d been hoping to reach the door he’d so carefully created for himself on the roof, but sometimes you just had to call a lot of attention to yourself and blow up a window.

Glass flew everywhere, hot and sharp. Curled away from the blast and protecting his head, the shards cut through Nightwing’s coat but stopped harmlessly once they hit his body armor. Kid Flash shouted. When Nightwing looked over, he was curled in on himself, covering his head with his arms. Good. He had some sense.

Not expecting the explosion, and not having body armor built for them, Kid Flash had a few long cuts on his arms. His ears were probably ringing pretty badly. It’d have messed up his balance, at least for a little while.

Still, Nightwing had learned his lesson. The moment he recovered, he was up and running out his new exit, determined to make every second count.

The arrow struck his shoulder mid-leap.

He’d been aiming for a streetlight. He’d been aiming for a streetlight to use as a stepping stone to getting him back on the rooftops, where Kid Flash would have to risk a lot more than running into a wall to follow him. He was going too fast for an arrow to throw him off course completely, but it was enough. Instead of catching the metal bar and swinging himself up to an adjacent building, the streetlight passed right over his fingers, and it was only his instinctive tuck that saved him from broken bones.

His jacket wasn’t so lucky. It gave a long, awful _riiipp_ as he rolled over the asphalt, into the street. The device he’d shoved in his pocket gave a crunch. His left wrist ached from taking too much of his weight at a bad angle. His right shoulder had an arrow stuck in his body armor.

Of all the times for Speedy to reappear.

Then, he saw the figure in his periphery. He’d known there was someone on the streets, but planning to be on the rooftops in a moment, it had been the vague knowledge of something glanced at but never studied. Now that he was on the ground, he realized that was a critical error.

No plan survived first contact. There were some unlikely variables that could be adjusted for, like Speedy deciding to finally rear his head after three months of silence.

Then there were things like Superman deciding to stop by for the night.

Nightwing’s frantic handspring wasn’t quite fast enough to get him out of arm’s reach.

Superman slammed him back down into the concrete, driving all the air from his lungs.

Distantly, he heard Kid Flash whooping— “ _Good one, Supey!_ ”— and something more. Nightwing lost most of it in a coughing fit as he tired to take a breath.

He didn’t have time to recover before two strong hands gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him up, pinning him with his arms pressed between his back and Superman’s chest, one stupidly immovable arm holding him around his abdomen. It was not helping him get air back into his body at all. Messing with the speedster had almost been fun. This? Decidedly not fun.

…He’d kind of expected Superman to be taller.

In whatever time it’d taken for him to be pinned and suck in what little breath he could, Kid Flash had made it out of the building and was jogging at a visible pace over to where they were in the middle of the street. Nightwing tried to blink the choked tears back into his eyes ( _breathe_ ) and craned his neck, giving some token struggling to disguise his scanning the area. It was already awful enough to do with the aches all over his body and his lungs and diaphragm burning inside him, but at least his head was still in the game enough to think. Adrenaline hadn’t abandoned him yet.

While Kid Flash started rooting around in Nightwing’s jacket’s pockets, he managed to get a look at Superman and realized that, yeah—there was something _off_ about that face. He had a pretty good memory for faces, and this one was just a little too angular to match up to the face that decorated every Justice League article ever written.

Kid Flash pulled out the stolen device with an ‘aha!’ and brandished it like a trophy. “So… whoever-you-are. Gonna tell us why you wanted this, whatever-it-is?”

Nightwing wheezed. “Uh. No.”

“Well that sucks,” said Kid Flash. He sounded disappointed. Maybe concerned? _Heroes._ Always too soft on their enemies. Almost as bad as metas about perceived nonpowered. “Superboy, you think you can keep a hold of him while I grab the handcuffs?”

Super _boy_? As if one weren’t bad enough.

The answer was a grunt from right behind Nightwing’s ear. Not nearly as expressive as one of Batman’s grunts. Just a sound, not an emotion.

Breathing was coming easier, now. He still hurt from somewhere deep in his gut, but he’d hope for the moment that it was just from getting the wind knocked out of him and not something seriously wrong. He could still get out of this, as long as he could breathe.

It wasn’t exactly something he could hide—trying to regulate his breathing. In the nose. Out the mouth. Gasping. He sounded like he’d just come up after almost drowning.

“What’s he…?” said Superboy.

“You hit him pretty hard, Supey,” Kid Flash said, almost sounding apologetic. There was a jingle of chain. He’d already gotten the handcuffs.

Nightwing had a taser built into the suit. If he could just—his hands couldn’t move enough, trapped against Superboy’s chest.

Kid Flash kept talking. “He’s just recovering. Spin him around a sec so I can get at his hands before he gets all the way back. Not that I’m doubting your grip or anything. But, y’know.”

Kid Flash and Speedy weren’t new at this, so Nightwing really shouldn’t have been thinking ‘ _amateurs_ ,’ but he was. Or maybe he was biased. They hadn’t started out somewhere you couldn’t give an inch or the world would take a mile.

Superboy shifted his grip to Nightwing’s biceps without removing his hands from him in the slightest, which he had to give some sort of credit for, but it wouldn’t be enough. Kid Flash was quick with the handcuffs, snapping them around Nightwing’s wrists the moment they were visible, but that wouldn’t save him.

The moment Nightwing could move his wrists, he pressed them together, pressing and twisting in the right places, and activated the suit’s taser.

Superboy yelped. His grip twitched loose. Nightwing leapt up, kicking against Superboy’s chest like a springboard to send him knocking back into Kid Flash, who hit the pavement with a _crack_ and caught the last wave of shocks.

Nightwing rolled to his feet, breathing heavily. The arrow snapped mid-roll, its head digging further into his shoulder. When he stood up again, he had his hands in front of his chest, not trapped behind his back. Still handcuffed, but he could work with this.

He ran towards the sidewalk, zig zagging out of the path of an arrow, and hopped from a mailbox onto the lamppost he’d originally missed. From there, he scaled the building Speedy was on. Always take out the snipers.

Except, leaping onto the roof, Speedy wasn’t there. Instead, it was a girl in a green mask and street clothes—but with a bow aimed right at him. Not stopping long enough to question the switch, Nightwing twisted out of the line of fire and somersaulted beneath the second release of just one arrow. He launched out of the roll and knocked her flat on her back, his hands around her throat. He had to twitch himself out of the urge to snap her neck. She wasn’t Speedy, but she was with the League kids, so until he knew more, that meant she was off limits.

He kept one foot on her chest, scooped up her bow, and threw it off the building. He didn’t have time to test if he could break something that reinforced. It’d be a temporary measure, but right now, he was more concerned about getting to the next rooftop, because Superboy in the street was starting to stand up, and he looked pissed enough to leap the building.

That was when the low rumble of an engine caught his attention. It caught Superboy’s attention, too, maybe even sooner, but Nightwing _knew_ that sound, and he knew it wasn’t just the passing rumble of a plane from the local airport.

He grinned and got off the not-Speedy, hurrying back a few feet to get a running start to leap the roof to the next building. Not any higher than his current one, but just slightly farther away from any strays. In the street, Kid Flash had also started to sit up again, rubbing the back of his head before his jaw dropped in an ‘o’.

The batwing tended to do that to people who weren’t expecting it.

The plane flew towards Nightwing, drawn by the homing signal in his gauntlets and belt. Hovering just a few feet above his rooftop, even with handcuffs obstructing his grip and his injuries still hindering his movement, it was an easy jump once the bottom opened up for entrance.

The floor closed up behind him, and before he’d had time to settle in the pilot’s seat, much less mess with his handcuffs, something _whumped_ outside.

“Oh no—” Leaping a building was one thing, but Nightwing did _not_ need Superboy leaping onto the batwing’s wing. Not now.

He grabbed the controls, snapping the plane out of hover mode. He pulled back sharply, guiding them into a rapid ascent. When that didn’t shake the bastard, he evened out the altitude a few hundred feet above Central City’s skyline—almost near the outskirts at that point, at the angle they’d ascended at—and guided the batwing into a rapid aileron roll.

Superboy went flying off the wing.

Despite knowing it was probably a matter of time before Superboy regained himself and came flying back for round two, Nightwing grinned as he watched the angry speck fall towards the city’s outskirts.

Except Superboy never started flying.

He just kept falling.

The grin slid off Nightwing’s face. He kept flying, guiding the plane a bit further north than strictly necessary for reaching Gotham, but—he kept watching, putting off engaging autopilot or even getting his handcuffs off, in favor of glancing continuously out the window, _waiting_ to see if Superboy would reemerge.

_Please don’t be dead_ , he thought, pulse racing. _I will be in so much trouble if you’re dead_.

If Superboy couldn’t fly, there was always the chance he wasn’t invulnerable, either. A fall like that was far beyond a one-in-a-million chance at survival. Far higher than any bigtop accident.

Two minutes after Superboy’s crash site had left his field of vision, Nightwing swallowed the anxiety in his throat and turned back to the controls. He’d have to land at some point and make sure Superboy hadn’t placed any trackers before he fell, but one thing at a time.

Keep breathing. Keep going.

He engaged the autopilot, setting it to take them towards Minnesota. Far enough away from any Leaguers or vigilantes, with enough open and empty land that he could go unnoticed for an hour or two. Maybe get passed off as an UFO.

That done, he slid a lockpick out of his gauntlet and got to work on the handcuffs, which was when he noticed the flashing light on the dash of the plane.

He’d been so preoccupied with Superboy and getting away from danger he hadn’t registered it before, but a message was left for him. That it went to the ship’s receiver rather than his com meant it probably wasn’t urgent, or at least nothing that required his immediate attention, but still. He authorized it to play, sitting back to listen as he continued unlocking the handcuffs.

_Nightwing_

Batman’s tone wasn’t exactly cheerful, but Nightwing relaxed all the same, hearing it. His aches still hurt, his gut was still on fire, but it was a little more bearable, now. Batman wasn’t here, not in person, but he had contact.

_There has been an incident. No fatalities. Red Hood is injured; Robin has made her first kill in his defense._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fight scenes are hard
> 
> Sooo now you know what the poll was for! I couldn’t decide if I wanted Superboy or Artemis to be crashing at Wally’s house while Nightwing was invading STAR labs. So I put up a poll. “Both” won by a whopping majority, even when counting ‘though I prefer Supey/Artemis’ votes as a vote as well. Superboy ultimately got more votes than Artemis, so he gets to deal the most damage. I am great with polls.
> 
> No one said anything last chapter about Dick having apparently killed Mr. Haly. So I guess the ‘definitely not a serial killer’ vibe got too acceptable and now I’m going to just have to up my shock factors? Maybe they’re cheap tricks, but damn, do they ever work for characterization and differentiation from the main plotline, y’know?
> 
> In most comics canon, Wally West has abusive biological parents. In the YJ cartoon, he seems to have a pretty good relationship with his parents. I’m going for a middle ground where his homelife isn’t ideal, but it’s not bad by a stretch. It helps that he’s a bit older in this AU and has just entered his senior year of highschool.
> 
> I’m gonna be out of the country starting the 29th. Idk how much I’ll be able to write before I get back on December 10th, but chapter 8 is partly written (partly because I transplanted half of it from this chapter) , so here’s the plan: either there will be another chapter by the 29th, or a pretty quick update once I get back on the 10th. Because holidays aren’t really my family’s thing, so I plan to write through most of this time if I can. non timbo mala will also be updating before the 29th with any luck, and hopefully another… au oneshot… that is 25,000 words long… and is basically just a love letter to Bruce+Dick and morality… is also gonna be posted.
> 
> So yeah. Lemme know whatchy’all think.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> one day, someone will make it to the batcave without being injured, but it clearly isn't this day.

….

When Stephanie Brown first met Batman, she’d been covered in blood, but she was not a murderer.

She was shaking. She’d lost her voice. She couldn’t loosen her fingers or relax her arms at all, and she was covered in blood.

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt. Maybe it was just a few splatters, really. But there was blood in her hair, and blood on her jeans, and blood soaking into her sneakers, making them squeak with every step she took, so Timmy had taken the reins. _Timmy_ had taken the reins. He’d emerged from his shadows on the edge of the empty lot, walked right up to Batman, and said: “help.”

Stephanie heard Nightwing start laughing, high pitched and uncomfortable.

Then, they heard the gunshot.

Batman’s face twisted. Darkened. He turned, and Stephanie could have sworn he stared right through her—and she knew he saw the two crumpled bodies behind her, and the dead cop by the wall. She knew that Nightwing was leaping over her head, and that she was going to die.

She knew she was going to die.

The Bat snarled. She remembered teeth. He didn’t bother addressing Nightwing, didn’t call out for Robin. His stare pinned Steph in place, froze her in terror. “ _Explain_.”

Stephanie choked. She held the iron piping in her hands even tighter. She was going to die.

Tim’s tiny hands reached out and snagged the Bat by his cape. Steph didn’t know people could go so still. Didn’t know Tim could speak with a voice of steel. “He tried to help us.”

The first time Stephanie Brown met Batman, she was shivering and covered in blood.

000

She spent three days in a room with Tim, awaiting the inevitable, wondering why they had to be locked up instead of just _ending it_. The Bat didn’t torture people, only his little bird did, and even then she’d always thought it was only the Families they seemed to go after that way. But maybe Riddler’d been wrong when he delivered that gossip. Maybe the Bat just didn’t like leaving marks. Maybe he liked watching people break.

Admittedly, she wasn’t really in the best headspace. The Bat hadn’t even hurt her when he’d knocked her out. She woke up alone in the room—four windowless walls, two beds, two doors, and no escape—with a pair of clean clothes beside her, a plate of tinfoil-wrapped food at the foot of the bed, and her injuries bandaged. Dried blood crusted off her clothes and hair when she moved. The only unlocked door led to a bathroom.

She ate, washed the blood out of her hair, changed clothes, and lay back on the bed, hoping they’d kill her while she was asleep. Instead, Timmy was there when she woke up, his bad arm in a new wrapping and his hair cut short again. He said he’d explained everything to Batman and Nightwing. Steph started choking again, looking around for some way to escape. Tim said not to bother. She lay back down and wondered how it came to this.

Nightwing came in later. Hard to know how long. He brought in a plate of food, a stack of books, and the words, “Robin’s alive.” It went like that, in and out, for three days.

Two days after Everything Happened, Robin showed signs of waking from his medically-induced coma. Early on day three, Nightwing brought her and Timmy out of the room and led them down a set of stone stairs and into a massive, messy cavern.

Stephanie really thought that was it.

Robin was awake. Still super listless, but awake, and making quiet moaning sounds from where they had him hidden behind a white plastic curtain. Now that it looked like he was really going to survive, Batman had no reason to hold onto them (if he’d had a reason in the first place. Around day two, she sort of chalked it up to a classic case of _‘I need someone to take my anger out on if things don’t go the way I want them to_ ,’ which, okay, maybe she was projecting a bit, but could anyone blame her?) so it seemed pretty reasonable that at any moment, Batman was going to either walk up behind her and snap her neck, or have Nightwing do it. Would he even have to speak out loud to tell Nightwing to swoop in and gank them? If Batman could do that, he’d probably have told Nightwing to take them out before they reached the stairs. Or maybe _by_ using the stairs. Or maybe he wanted Robin to be able to watch. Maybe they’d somehow get Robin onto his feet and allow him the honors. Maybe that was why they were brought out of the room. So Robin could do it.

Batman seemed to have an interest in Timmy, though, if the last two days were anything to go by. The haircut, Nightwing occasionally pulling Tim out for questioning, the glances that Batman was currently shooting him from all the way over by Robin’s cot. It was simultaneously a relief but also _really mortifying_ , since even if they only killed _her,_ then Timmy would be—

(Timmy wasn’t the best in the head. Neither was she, so not like she was judging. They balanced each other out okay, until Tim started feeling confident around the Bat, and she’d _known_ her little dude wasn’t the best judge of character, but Timmy, holy _fuck,_ pick someone better to click with—)

—if they only wanted to kill her, Timmy would probably be fine, but that didn’t mean Steph wanted to die or leave him in the stupid, damp cave all on his own. Maybe someone was offering reward money for Tim Drake now. Maybe Batman needed money to move to a slightly less damp cave. She’d believe it. She’d believe anything at that point.

But just because she believed it didn’t mean she wanted to be a part of it in any fashion, especially if it involved dying or leaving her little dude to an uncertain fate.

They were left relatively on their own in the center of the cavern, close to the medical area and its white curtain. Batman was standing there, in the gap of the curtain, when they’d arrived. He hadn’t moved much, though Steph was certain he was very much aware of their presence. Robin was still making small croaking noises, as best as she could tell, and it was distracting the Bat. For the meantime, it seemed like Nightwing was in charge of holding them still.

So basically, there wasn’t any getting out.

Except that one moment Nightwing was there, and the next, he’d muttered “stay put,” and there was only air behind her. 

She cased the place quickly, taking in the cave as fast as she could—it was lit by floodlights and suspended lamps, and _well_ lit by them, at that. Long, lumpy shadows were cast over the rocky walls by all the weird paraphernalia that was just sort of everywhere. A huge Toy Story dinosaur, a giant penny, junk piled up on desks and out-of-place shelves, and it looked like there was an alligator skeleton hanging from the ceiling? It may have just been a heavily shadowed airplane. She wasn’t focusing but so hard on those details, because the most important part was the staircase not far from their left, looking like it descended in the direction of a wide, well-lit garage. Where there was a garage, there was an exit.

She was willing to bet at least one of those motorcycles or cars had keys in their ignition, ready to go.

She swallowed again, glancing at Timmy beside her. He hadn’t moved a muscle since they were told to stay put—damn it, Timmy—but that could’ve meant he was entranced by what was in front of him or he was terrified, and neither was going to help if she let him keep it up.

She spot checked Batman and Nightwing again. Batman was still by the cot, one hand on Robin’s shoulder, the other looking like it might’ve been holding an IV bag. Nightwing reappeared next to a huge hunk of metal that vaguely resembled a computer, his back to them and apparently looking something up. His fingers hit the keys at a ridiculous rate.

Both looked like they were just another few moments away from turning around and dealing with her and Tim in whatever way they were going to deal with them. It was now or never.

She grabbed Tim’s arm, gave an almighty tug, and they were off. Tim nearly fell off his feet, but thankfully didn’t make any sound louder than a startled gasp, and quickly started running along with her.

“Hey!” Nightwing didn’t have footsteps, but he appeared in her peripheral vision a moment after she heard his voice. “I just turned away for a _second_ , now, come—”

He bent and stuck one leg out as if to trip her, and in that moment, Stephanie struck.

Nightwing yelped.

It was pretty clear he had a cup and wasn’t nearly as hurting as she’d hoped he would be, but the shock of having a knee straight to the crotch was enough to make him roll a good ten feet back and get them that much more space to run to the vehicles.

‘That much more space,’ didn’t really seem to make much difference, though. A few second’s difference, at least. Maybe this was sort of like going feet-first into a black hole. It only got you a teeny bit more time of consciousness before you were spaghettified, but you went in feet-first anyway.

Nightwing recovered from being kneed in the nads just as Steph was a few steps from the staircase with Tim right on her heels.

Until he wasn’t.

She felt Tim’s hand being _wrenched_ out of her own, heard the quiet sound of distress the kid made. Then, Nightwing was on her.

She landed harshly, her chest taking most of the blow. At least it wasn’t her chin, but she let out a strangled yowl all the same, even as he arms were jerked up and pinned behind her back. Her stomach bounced up to her throat and back down again, leaving her feeling like she was one bad turn away from throwing up.

“Impressive,” a voice said.

A deeper one than Nightwing’s. Steph fought down the nerves threatening to come up her throat. Maybe it was the nausea of hitting the floor so hard. Yeah, that was it.

Still, she twisted her head around to look and try to get her bearings. She’d been tackled from the side and landed next to the guard rail between the current level and the garage. On one side, down the steps, she could see what might’ve been her getaway vehicle, in another life. On her other side stood Batman. Not the best dichotomy. Especially when Batman was standing over Tim.

Not in the very literal way that Nightwing was currently on top of her, but Batman just seemed very much on top of Tim, despite not touching him at all, and Tim not even being on the floor. And Tim just stood there. A few feet away from Batman. Completely dwarfed.

She really couldn’t tell if Tim was experiencing the ‘deer in headlights’ or a strange and misplaced form of admiration.

“’Impressive’?” came Nightwing’s strained voice from above her. “’Impressive,’ he says! Really?”

“She saw the opportunity and took it,” Batman said, impassive. “You were distracted.”

“What, like I can be on guard twenty-five hours a day?” said Nightwing, making some sort of motion that tugged at her arms.

“You usually are,” said Batman. “Yet she managed to achieve a point of contact.”

“Ignoring the fact I wasn’t actually trying to hurt her,” said Nightwing, huffing.

“Yes,” said Batman, “Ignoring that.”

“…you do these things just to bug me, don’t you?”

“Not everything is about you, Nightwing.”

Back in the medical ward, now fully obscured by a white curtain, Robin began making sounds of distress all over again. Without another word, Batman turned and swept around, his cape trailing behind him as he returned to his position by the bed.

Nightwing watched him go, staying still and rigid on Steph’s back. She coughed. He jolted and looked back down at her. “…yes?”

“Uh,” she said, not entirely believing she was even trying this. Was she concussed? “Before I die, I’d really like circulation back in my arms.”

“Oh!” She hadn’t _actually_ believed it would work, but it totally did. The steel grip holding her arms behind her back loosened and he picked himself up, entirely removing the weight holding her down. “Sorry about that, habi—”

She swung her fist at his face.

Let it be known that Nightwing was forever banned from limbo tournaments, because with only one foot on the ground, he bent _backwards_ , ducked her arm, and flipped back to standing in the time it took for her to sit upright and reset her swing.

“ _Okay_ ,” he said, holding up a hand. “I kind of deserved that, even if you missed. Now please stop trying to hit me.”

It took her a moment to reply, since she was busy sprinting over to Tim. She planted herself between him and Nightwing, fists raised, and said, “Not unless you let us go!”

Nightwing smiled.

Having the smile focused on her wasn’t nearly as creepy as she’d expected it to be. When people said he would dispatch you with a smile, she’d always, well—

She’d always sort imagined Joker.

Nightwing’s smile was serene on his face. Not particularly nice, but not… not what she’d thought it would be. Though she really didn’t think it would matter much when he inevitably pulled out a weapon and started to—

A small hand laid on her shoulder.

  
She flinched, almost jumping away entirely before realizing it was only Tim. Even when he was right in front of her, she’d been convinced Nightwing was already at her back.

“Timmy,” she hissed, not hardly daring to _blink_ as long as Nightwing was standing in front of her, arms loose at his side, not looking at all concerned about being attacked. “When I say go, you run for the stairs, okay?”

“Can’t we just talk?” Tim said.

He said it loud enough that Nightwing heard. Damnit, Timmy.

And Nightwing held up both his hands in surrender and said, “Yeah. That’s basically what the plan is, honestly. No killing involved. Promise.”

Steph did not mean for her shoulders to relax so much just from hearing something like that, because there was no guarantee at all. Just because she really wanted to believe it when people said they weren’t out to kill didn’t make it true—at least the whole time, she never dropped her fists, even though she was pretty sure fighting Nightwing when he was ready for her wasn’t really a good idea at all. But every day was an adventure, right? A horrible nightmare of an adventure.

Nightwing studied them, head bobbing up and down as he looked them over, his slightline clear despite the obscuring mask. “I _promise_. If it makes you feel better, assume Batman really hates messes. He does.”

Stephanie swallowed the massive lump stuck in her throat and forced her voice to be steady. “No torture either?”

“Absolutely none,” he said, forming his pointer finger and thumb into an ‘ok’ symbol.

Even though Steph’s nerves were still frayed from two days of confinement, surely under close observation by people she _knew_ carried out assassination contracts, apparently Tim’s nerves were not. He kept his tiny hand on her shoulder and took a few steps out from behind her back until he stood beside her. The hand on her shoulder gave one squeeze, and before Steph could tell him to not be stupid, he said, “What did you want to talk about?”

And Nightwing was smiling. Keeping his distance, hands still where they could see them, and smiling. He sat down cross-legged on the floor and said, “Well. Batman’s gotten pretty interested in you two, so now you’ve got a choice.”

000

“Timothy, come closer,” Batman said.

The cowl was down, but he was using The Voice, so Tim came skidding forward, ignoring the look Jason was shooting his way. Jason didn’t look capable of doing much expect glaring at the moment, though. He was propped up on a gurney in the rigorously cleaned cubical of the cave that made up the medical area, Batman in front of him, Steph as Robin to one side, and now Tim on the other. Jason’s face was twisted up in barely-repressed pain and his arm was held tight in Batman’s grip as the final preparations for sutures were finished.

“He is not practicing on me,” Jason said, his teeth clenched. A localized numbing agent had already been applied to his arm, but the did nothing to improve his mood or care for the tens of other small hurts that littered his body after taking a bad dive into the side of a dumpster. As battered and bad as his mood was, though, he seemed otherwise relaxed with Batman hovering over him, despite the horribly curved needle, a pair of pinchers, and an already-used bottle of saline solution. Maybe the clenched teeth were simply an instinctive reaction borne of knowing what was about to come in a few moments. Stephanie seemed to be having a similar reaction, and she wasn’t even the one who needed stitches.

“You’re right, he’s not,” Batman said, head slightly inclined, “But he will be observing.”

Jason hissed something that Tim couldn’t catch, or might not have been a word at all.

“Better to have them observe now while I’m available, rather than later, in a more dire situation, and have to orchestrate your own medical care,” and the way Batman said _that_ left Tim absolutely no doubt that he fully expected such a situation to arise. “Tonight already would have been much worse without Robin present.”

Stephanie fidgeted, glancing at her feet, still seeming a little off-balance about everything. Jason grunted again, but didn’t protest the words, either. He just closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, and stayed that way while Batman took what looked like a tiny pair of pliers and used it to hold the needle in place. “With a wound this shallow, we’ll be doing skin stitching. Tapered needle, nonsoluble thread, size 0-4; both are labeled in your suture kits, I’ll prepare a more thorough overview of the various thread sizes later. Grasp at the center of the needle. Avoid grasping by the tip, or you’ll blunt it. Never touch it with your fingers, or you’ll contaminate it. Enter at a 90o degree angle. The wound isn’t bleeding badly, so I’m making single stitches and tying each suture off individually. Single stitches are stronger and easier to remove, but take a more time to apply than a continuous stitch. To tie this sort of suture, take your forceps and—”

While Steph seemed to be steadying her stomach and Jason kept his breathing even and slow, Tim watched carefully as Batman continued to calmly explain how to stitch someone up, demonstrating at the same time—a feat which only paused as a low rumbling shook the cave.

“Nightwing’s late,” Batman said, tying one of the last stitches with a deft hand.

“Can I…?” Tim began.

“He’ll be here in a moment,” Batman said, not even shaking his head. “Wait.”

Sure enough, Nightwing emerged from the hanger a few minutes later, still fully masked and in costume, carrying a bundle that appeared to be his brown jacket under the other arm.

“Hey, guys!” he said, perking up as he came into the room and saw everyone in one piece—or at least, recently sewn back together—“Batman told me. Steph—”

He dropped everything. Steph was promptly enveloped in a smothering hug. She all but disappeared beneath Nightwing’s body armor, the only indication of her continued presence being a few shocks of blond hair that had rebelled from even the confinement of the embrace.

“I heard the basics,” Nightwing said, grinning down at her. “You did good.”

Two green-gloved hands hesitantly escaped his grasp and wrapped around his torso in return. She mumbled a reply, but Tim couldn’t hear it properly. Whatever it was, it made Nightwing smile wider and give a low, fond chuckle before ruffling her hair and returning his full focus to the hug. Stephanie didn’t even argue the hair ruffle.

“And he doesn’t have a scratch on him,” Jason muttered from his place on the cot. “Figures.”

Nightwing laughed. “Yeah, well, I aim to impress.”

Tim watched him smile. He had a split lip. The left side of his face looked somehow odd, and he kept out of direct bright light, keeping to the edges of the medical area when his face was towards them. Tim would… have to figure out if Jason couldn’t see the injuries, or if he were being sarcastic. It was really hard to tell sometimes. He was a terrible liar, but even worse at being honest.

“So what happened?” Nightwing said, glancing around the room as he pulled away from Stephanie, one arm still slung over her shoulder. “B just said you had some trouble and Steph swooped in to save the day?”

“Totally what happened,” Steph said.

“No it fuckin’ ain’t,” said Jason, scowling.

Bruce sighed deeply, and they all felt a little bit guilty. Jason muttered an apology for cursing.

“But really,” Nightwing broke the short uneasy silence first. “What went wrong?”

“Joker goons,” Jason revealed at last, after glancing back and forth between Tim, Steph, and Bruce, before finally resigning himself to telling the story while Bruce wrapped a loose bandage around his arm. “Set up that informant meeting as an ambush. One got a lucky hit in. Steph went ballistic.”

Stephanie blushed and hung her head. Nightwing patted her between the shoulder blades.

“You get anything from tonight besides a new nasty scar, then?”

“Don’t make me throw the saline at you,” Jason said, holding his good arm up in warning.

“I’m really not that concerned right now.”

“Sorry,” Steph said, fidgeting with her hands in front of her, “if I’d come in a little sooner or hadn’t—hadn’t h-hit so fast, we’d maybe have gotten something.”

Nightwing squeezed her around the shoulders with one arm. “Hey, hey, it’s okay! The info isn’t a big deal, I was just asking. You’re both safe, and that’s the important part. Having to save Jason’s butt from stupid situations is basically a family tradition at this point, you know?”

“I motion for a new family tradition,” Jason said, raising his uninjured hand while Bruce edged away, clearing the area and stowing the still-usable supplies. “Beating up Timmy.”

“Hey!” Tim said, turning bright red even as he clenched his fists at his side.

“No beating up your siblings,” Batman said. They quieted once again. The last drawer slid shut after Bruce’s quick cleanup of the area, and they refocused onto him again. “Red Hood and Robin received some minor, repetitive information before the assault. Do you have anything to add, Nightwing?”

“Uh,” Nightwing said, stepping away from Steph, replacing both his arms by his side. “I… yeah. The bugs were successfully planted, but there were complications.”

Bruce’s face tightened.

“I wrote up most of the report on my way over, but the important information is, uh,” Nightwing glanced around the small group. He still hadn’t sat down. His back and legs were held with an unfamiliar stiffness, as if he weren’t comfortable moving. Which was. Not good. “There were superheroes in Central. More than expected.”

Batman watched him wordlessly.

“Kid Flash was present, but the real issue were two others. One was an archer—not Speedy. It was a girl. The other one… had an S-shield on him.”

“Wait,” Jason said, sitting up sharply. “The S-shield? You fought the big enchilada?”

“I don’t think so?” Dick said, shrugging bringing a finger to his cheek to scratch, looking a little confused himself. “There is a possibility he was in fact a tiny taco? A very angry tiny taco. A very _strong,_ angry, tiny taco. I’m surprised he didn’t try to melt my face off.”

“Did he get a good look at your face?” Bruce leaned in suddenly, voice full of urgency. It snapped Dick back to attention in a moment.

“Uh. No, I tried to avoid looking right at him, so at worst I might’ve exposed some of my profile, but I don’t know if he used x-ray vision on me or not. If he even had it. If he’s even _alive._ ”

There was a long, stony silence that fell over the group. Nightwing took a deep breath.

“He jumped onto the Batwing. I assumed he could fly and shook him off a few hundred feet up. He didn’t fly. I didn’t stop to see if he made it. If he couldn’t fly, I don’t know what else he may or may not’ve been able to do. Or if he’s even connected to the League. I don’t know.”

“We’ll know soon, I’m sure,” Bruce said, scowling. He laced his fingers together in front of himself and frowned down at the floor below him. “In the meantime, I’m modifying your masks and we’ll proceed with things as planned, with the assumption this will bring us to the League’s attention. That means curfew’s in place; get to bed and get ready for tomorrow.”

They all nodded, now quiet and staring at their feet or the blank expanses of cave floor in front of them. Jason slid off the cot and held out his uninjured arm.

“Pipsqueak, c’mere with me real quick,” he said, holding his hand out to Steph. She nodded quickly and took it, following Jason out of the medical area and up the stairs to the second story, by Dick and Jason’s tattered old uniforms.

Nightwing shifted a bit before beginning to move after them. “I’m going to—”

“—Nightwing,” Batman said. Nightwing stiffened. “See me privately before you retire.”

After a moment of eye contact, Nightwing gave a single sharp nod, and said, “I’m going to upload what I have of my report before coming up.”

Batman made a tiny sound and swept out of the med area towards the changing stations, leaving Nightwing and Tim on their own.

Nightwing looked down at him. “Wanna head straight to bed, or hang out with me a bit?”

Tim moved to Nightwing’s side right away, smiling faintly. “Do you want any painkillers?”

Nightwing shook his head, looking a little startled. It was one of those things that was hard to tell from behind a mask, but the tensing of the mouth gave it away. “Nah, I’m fine. Just need a hot bath and a good night’s sleep, and I’ll be fine.”

Tim nodded, “Okay,” and was the last person out of the medical area, turning off the lights and shutting the door without locking it as they made their way towards the computer.

It was a slow walk. Whether Nightwing was trying to disguise his injuries anymore or if he was just tired, Tim didn’t know, but it was a slow walk from the medical bay to the computer deck. When they arrived, Nightwing slid into the chair and ignored the small squeak it made. It had squeaked ever since Tim first arrived in the cave. He wondered if Bruce would ever get around to fixing it, but had never asked.

“So, what’s up?” Nightwing asked. Tim startled a bit, looking over. The computer was on and glowing, but Nightwing was turned away from it, focusing on him instead. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Tim pursed his lips. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Then it won’t be a big deal to lemme know, right?” Nightwing smiled.

Tim snorted.

He… he was never really sure what to think about Dick, exactly.

Jason was a terrible actor and could only lie by omission. Steph hardly saw the point in lying most of the time. He was making a catalogue of Bruce’s tells, so that even if he wasn’t sure why or what Bruce was lying about, he would always at least be aware that there was some falsity occurring. But it was always kind of hard for him to tell what Dick was thinking.

“Timmy?”

…but even if it was a lie, Dick was nice.

“Why’s Jason like that to me?”

Nightwing’s smile faded, replaced with startled concern. His mouth opened and then closed again, once, twice, and he sat back from the computer, sagging into the chair.

“Well,” he began, scratching the side of his head. “It’s… it’s like when parents bring home a new baby; the kid already there is upset, because he’s used to having all the attention, and now it’s more split than he’s used to, and there’s just this… rough adjustment period full of resentment and anger.”

Oh. Parents and siblings. That was an analogy Tim could… sort of work with. On an intellectual level.

Nightwing grimaced. Tim cut him off before he could try to modify his analogy. “I get it, it’s fine. But—” he sighed. “If that’s all it is, why wasn’t he sniping at Steph just now, too?”

Nightwing pursed his lips again and continued after a moment. “Well, uh, building on the baby metaphor…” he looked to Tim for permission, and continued after a nod. “There’s actually two babies. And one of them can play video games with you, and the other one can’t, so you put all the misplaced anger on the baby who can’t.”

“Except instead of video game, it’s the not-hiding part of the job.” Tim crossed his arms and tried to pretend it didn’t look like he was hugging himself.

“Something like that.” Nightwing looked sad. Tim didn’t think he was projecting. “You’ll get there eventually, though. You’re already really good, anyway.”

Tim shifted his weight back and forth. He needed to stop that. “…did you hate Jason like he hates me? Back when he first showed up?”

Nightwing laughed. “Are you kidding? I wanted to kill him.”

“But Batman wouldn’t let you.”

“Do you really think Batman could’ve stopped me if I wanted to go through with it?” Tim suspected not, and didn’t really care. Not when Nightwing reached up a gauntlet, ruffled his hair, and smiled at him again. “It’ll get better. Promise. He’ll warm up to you soon enough. Maybe you just have to personally save his butt, first.” 

“I think he’d just get more resentful that it was _me_ saving his butt,” Tim said, but smiled all the same.

“Haha, maybe. It’s hard to know with him. He’d probably act all huffy to your face and in the middle of the night throw a fruit basket through your window, or something.”

“The bunker doesn’t have windows.”

“Drill a hole in your ceiling and lower it down, then. Could be anything.”

The silence they fell into after that was comfortable. Dick turned back to the computer and Tim leaned against the chair, watching the screens flashing in front of him the same way he might watch a movie. “I guess I’m last, then?”

“Hm?” Nightwing said. He sounded tired, more-so than before, like he might’ve been falling asleep in costume where he sat.

“To kill.”

“Oh.” Nightwing took a deep breath then, humming. “If you want to try and keep pace with Steph, I can arrange something for you. It’ll take a bit, though. Especially if there’s someone in particular you want to get back at.”

The silence after that felt very different than the last one had. Expectation. But also—if Tim bothered to look up, if he dared look up, he knew he would see Nightwing watching him carefully, looking for a hint of something, though Tim wasn’t sure what. Instead, he did what he’d been doing the whole time he found himself doing when he found himself lost in the company of the Bat and his birds—he took a deep breath, and told the truth.

“No, anyone’s fine,” he said. “There’s no one I really care about.”

Nightwing stilled for a moment—went more still than he _had_ been—before reaching a hand down and giving Tim’s arm a squeeze. His lips were pursed, and he seemed to be thinking very hard about something. “Your dad…”

“I don’t want to kill my dad.” Tim shook his head sharply. “There’s still a chance he might wake up. There’s things I want to ask him.”  
  


Nightwing gave his arm another squeeze and let out a breath.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got the opening on Sunday night, and Monday for prep and recon, so let’s say Tuesday. I’ll have you someone by Tuesday. Does that sound good?”

Tim nodded and took a half step away from the chair, no longer feeling very much like resting with Nightwing. “Yeah, that’s fine. Thanks. I’m gonna head to bed, now, I think.”

“Okay,” Nightwing said, watching him. He stopped Tim long enough to stand and pull him into a quick, one-armed hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Tim said, leaning into the contact. He managed another smile, briefly, before excusing himself once again and shuffling across the cave, towards the bunker staircase.

Back to the room he shard with Stephanie. He would stay up and wait until Red Hood was done talking with her, and once he wasn’t alone, he could go to sleep. Maybe they would talk, first. Maybe?

But there would be time before then. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe a few hours, depending on what Steph and Jason were talking about. That was enough time. He shuffled up the stair and passed Jason’s room, into his and Steph’s, just down the hall from the bunker’s kitchen and bath.

The room was small. Modest. Big enough for two, or at least, they’d made it work. Painted cream-colors, with a generous carpet. Two beds on opposite walls. Two dressers. A mirror on each wall. Steph had requested a stereo weeks before, and there one sat, nestled at the foot of her bed, pastel-colored and pristine. Tim still had a hard time listening to music. Too loud. Too cluttered. It felt like trying to hide—not hiding to gain something, but just to _hide_.

The bunker and cave were naturally quiet, though there may have been an element of soundproofing in their designs—he knew there was soundproofing in the ceilings, or rather, the manor’s floors. Unless something got _very_ loud, it was unlikely the manor above would be aware at all—but despite that, there was still the hum of electricity and whirring of machines in the walls. The faint, distant rumble of the waterfall. When he booted up his three-month-old tablet, it buzzed. Connecting it to Gotham General Hospital’s security system meant that the faint murmur of traffic, both hospital traffic beyond the door and the motorized traffic out the window, reached him from miles away.

He lay on his bunk above the covers, one arm behind his head and the other propping the tablet up on his stomach as he watched a room far from his own and listened to the quiet words just beyond his walls, whose forms he couldn’t quite make out.

It was nice. To have company.

000

The study was a spacious area, filled with an antique hardwood desk flanked by two plush green couches atop a Turkish rug. The hidden entrance to the Cave was just behind the desk, obscured by a false wall. There were many hidden entrances to the Cave throughout the house; this one was not the most private, but late at night, with the curtains drawn over the left wall’s windows and an old domed lamp as the only source of light, it was adequate cover. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else in the house to see Dick exit a room he’d never entered.

No. No one really existed in the upstairs mansion besides Bruce Wayne and his ward.

There were times, true, when Jason had been brought upstairs into some of the interior rooms, far from windows, but that had been in the interest of not locking a boy alone in a subterranean level for days on end. Jason still ventured up occasionally, sticking to pre-approved rooms and avoiding windows like a plague, but it was an occasional thing, and always forewarned. Most of the time, socialization took place in the bunker or batcave, in a common area renovated not long after the decision to train Jason as Robin arrived.

Because of the relaxation and living spaces already available in the bunker, Stephanie and Timothy had been introduced to the library entrance and the quickest escape routes out of the house, but little else thus far. They were still unfamiliar enough with the building that Bruce planned to use Wayne Manor to teach them how to read and use floorplans efficiently.

Those were the plans Bruce had in his hands at that moment. Tapping the stray pages on the desk until they lined up evenly—multiple levels required multiple sheets of paper. Shuffling them would simply add an extra layer of challenge, to teach them attention to detail and quickness to order—he opened the top drawer of the desk and placed the papers inside a short moment later. There was nothing too unusual about storing copies of floor plans in a desk, especially when there were rumors he planned to remodel, soon. Old house, tired house; old style, tired style. He could call it a flight of fancy, if he pleased. Just putting in a new indoor pool.

That was how he stood when Dick approached him, silent and slow.

Bruce slid the drawer back into place and locked it shut, just as Dick’s head fell against his back.

He didn’t jump. He didn’t react much at all, truly—the moment the air currents had shifted in the room, he’d known the door was open, and no matter how quietly Dick moved, it was hard to mask one’s presence from another who’d grown so used to it.

Five years alone in a house together could do that to you.

Five years alone in a house meant Bruce no longer flinched away from the boy’s contact.

He’d been that way with Alfred, once.

Dick made a small, tired grunt of a sound as he shifted where his forehead rested on Bruce’s back. It had started at the shoulder blade, and now seemed to edge a bit closer towards Bruce’s shoulder in general.

Bruce made a barely-there sound deep in his throat, not turning or shifting away as Dick rested more weight on him.

“She’s taking it a bit worse than Jason did, his first time,” Dick said. His voice had a rasp to it that he couldn’t seem to bother keeping out. “She’ll pull through with positive reinforcement.”

Bruce nodded, hrm’ing, and lifted his hand to touch at the base of Dick’s neck. Like he had when the boy was a child. At his touch, Dick’s tense neck muscles unwound and he leaned all the more heavily into Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce stood, unwavering, his hand clasped on the base of Dick’s neck, on the juncture of his collarbone.

They stood like that a while. Dick on Bruce’s shoulder, Bruce’s hand on Dick’s neck. Saying nothing. Breathing deeply.

It had been a long night.

Bruce gave a squeeze to Dick’s neck. “You’ve handled your injuries?”

“Yep. It’s all superficial. Worst is a small crack. I’ll be better in a week.”

“Then get to bed.” _You’re exhausted._

It was terrible, really, that he felt the shift against his shoulder and knew in his gut that Dick was smiling.   
  


“Yessir,” he said, the words slurring intentionally as Bruce’s hand dropped away and Dick’s head lifted up. He stayed long enough to loop his arms around Bruce’s middle and squeeze. “You too, Bruce. Get some sleep.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Dick released him and took a step back. He was probably still smiling. He was probably shaking his head. “Don’t make me drag you again.”

“I’m not the one with a biology project due Monday.”

“No, you’re the one with a grand opening tonight and a multi-billion dollar corporation to run on Monday.” Dick was definitely shaking his head, and the worst part was that Bruce had long since given up arguing with him. “Also, that biology project might just be mediocre at best. Sorry, B.”

Bruce sighed and pinched his nose. “At least you’re turning it in this time.”

“When did you say they stopped teaching genetics?”

“When you get out of biology.”

Dick made a thoughtful but displeased sound at that.

“It’s bedtime,” Bruce said again. “Is there anything else you needed?”

“Keep an eye on Tim,” Dick said. And of course, now was the moment that he chose to start walking around the desk and heading towards the door to the hall. “He asked about killing. I’m gonna hunt down the guys who hurt Jason and turn one over to Tim. I don’t know if this’s a way to try and feel connected or something else, but just keep an eye on him, okay? He’s still waiting for his dad.”

A quick mental tally meant Bruce knew he did not like the sound of that, yet was equally relieved that whatever had gone wrong was apparently not immediately urgent. He found he lacked the words to share that comprehension. He grunted instead. Dick understood. He generally did.

Dick paused at the door, leaning against the frame and looking back out at Bruce—the mask was gone, now. Dick’s face fully visible. One of his eyes was ringed with a bruise, presently light enough that it almost blended in with the eternal darkness of the bags under his eyes. A much larger, darker one crawled up the collar of his shirt from his back. They reflected the dim light of the room just well enough that Bruce understood he’d already put a cream on it, recently enough that the salve was not yet fully absorbed into the skin. His lip was still split, but cleaned. He held his wrist gingerly.

His face was growing sharper, and it was only all the more obvious in the low light. He’d looked young for his age as a child; now it seemed he’d look too old for his age, and some of that may have been Bruce’s fault. Dick needed a long rest, a shave, and a hot meal. And Dick paused at the door, looked at Bruce, and smiled.   
  
“See you in the morning, B.”

Bruce nodded once, stiffly, and looked back down at his hands, resting on the edge of the antique desk. “Goodnight.”

And like that, it was done.

000

On Sunday morning, Barry Allen was released from his shift early. He went directly home. With a life as hectic as his, it usually paid to take his breaks and snatches of time at home whenever he could, even if the house was empty and Sunday morning wasn’t exactly prime crisis time for Central or Keystone. And he was happy about that.

That said, he was pretty surprised to step in his front door to find his nephew sprawled on the living room couch; one foot propped up on the coffee table, the other leg balancing an opened laptop, a massive mixing bowl of macaroni and cheese tucked awkwardly under his arm, and—where those chunks of ham mixed into the mac?

“Hi, Uncle B,” Wally West said around the fork, face mildly smeared with bright yellow melted cheese. Did he look ashamed? Nope. Not one bit.

“Hey, kiddo,” Barry said, shutting the door with his foot and smiling. “There’s not any more of that somewhere, is there?”

Wally jerked his head towards the kitchen, smiling right back, and reported, “Aunt Iris said to tell you to look in the oven.”

In a span of time a little bit longer than the flicker of a lightbulb, Barry had set down his shoulderbag on the coffee table, hit the kitchen, discovered the incredible vegetable lasagna hidden away in the oven, and returned back to the couch with a fork in hand, settling in next to Wally.

He didn’t exactly slow down after that. It was just him and Wally in the room, and while he usually kept a steady, non-meta pace out of consideration for those around them, right then there was no one but the other speedster in the room, and falling into a comfortable pace was as easy as shifting a muscle.

“Slow morning?”

“As hell. Mom and Dad are out at church and I told them I wanted to sleep in. They let me slide, but they might take me to the nighttime service later this week. Not looking forward to that. You?”  
  


“ _Crazy_ morning. Well, for everyone else, anyway. We’ve just been trying to ease up our backlog, but it turns out local vigilante Kid Flash interrupted a robbery last night, and that’s got the whole station going a little crazy. They’re all hoping you’re all right, by the way.”

Wally groaned, but he was smiling. “I’m fine. Cut’s’ve already healed up, it’s just a couple of bruises, now. They’ll be gone in, like, a day or two.”

Barry hadn’t gotten a chance to see Wally’s bruises himself, but he didn’t want to think about how bad they must’ve been if the kid was giving such a vague answer.

“Well, that’s good to hear. Especially since Kid Flash’s description of a costumed thief vaguely matched up with someone in a national database of wanted criminals.”

Wally blinked, eyes going owl-wide. “Who?”

“It’s _possible_ that Kid Flash went toe-to-toe with Gotham assassin-thief-slash-possible-mobster, Nightwing,” Barry said, voice low and steady. He lifted his eyes and stared into Wally’s own, so that Wally knew right then and there that he was so totally grounded. “It’s a _tenuous_ connection, mostly based on the descriptions of his movement, his getaway vehicle, and the bird comment, but he’s the closest match they could find.”

“So what’s this mean?”

  
“It means it’s officially out of my hands. The crime crossed jurisdictions. Central City might be sort of involved for a bit, but ultimately it’s not up to us to deal with him anymore. This isn’t big enough for Justice League intervention, either. It sounds like they’re mostly going to be on the lookout for the tech that was stolen and see if it surfaces anywhere. Otherwise, the CCPD’s had Gotham on the phone for the last hour, trying to coordinate and figure out as much as they can.”

“What’ve they learned? And why’d he want that little gauge thingy?”

“I don’t know _everything_ , hotshot, I’m just the CSI guy,” Barry smiled a bit, but lost it fairly quickly. “Look, Kid, I don’t want you going after this guy, okay?”

Wally frowned. Barry set his lasagna aside and leaned in closer, putting a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “It’s dangerous, Kid. I know you’ve been in a lot of rough situations before, but—he almost seriously hurt you and Superboy, and Artemis is certain if he weren’t so stuck on running, it might’ve been a lot worse than it was. Promise me you’re not gonna go after this one.”

Wally snorted and brushed his hand away, rolling his eyes. “Geez, Uncle B. Chill out. I’m not going to do anything. Besides, we don’t even know who he really is. What’m I gonna do, magically google him or something?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …i can’t believe I forgot to mention the ages in the A/Ns. I’ve been complaining about the age chart so much I actually forgot to share it. I aged everyone up so the Team would be fighting the Batfam instead of just, like the Bat Babies. So here’s the rundown of current in-universe ages as of ch 8:
> 
> Wally is 17 and a senior in highschool. Artemis is 16. Dick is 15 and will turn 16 in December (three-ish months from present.) Jason is 15 and has been for a handful of weeks, since late August. Tim and Steph are both thirteen going on fourteen. Sir Not Appearing in This Chapter (Damian) is currently seven, and tiny. All other ages are irrelevant. If in doubt, assume everyone is roughly 2-3 years older than in canon.
> 
> Updates: I am back in the country, and newly inducted into the Undertale Bandwagon if anyone else wants to join me here in hell. The Bruce+Dick+hellamorality fic is completed, but set aside for rereading because it’s ((TOO LONG)) glorious to my sleep deprived eyes and I need to give it breathing room before I realize it’s a piece of trash and can remodel it. non timebo mala has gained another chapter that’ll probably hopefully be up soon. I am so tired I can’t feel my eyes.
> 
> It’s gonna be snowmageddon 2.0 where I am. If I’m radio silent for a while, it’s probably because my internet (and possibly I myself) am buried under two feet of snow.
> 
> I wanna be back in Bolivia. It was like. 70 there. :(


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next morning.

 “Uh, yeah, that matches up pretty well to what data there is on Nightwing,” Cyborg said, opening his not-electric eye. “Movement analysis matches pretty perfectly. Crazy trick there, little lady.”  
  
M’gann giggled. “Not nearly as cool as _that_! We make a great team.”  
  
Cyborg smiled at her again, looking a little embarrassed. The machine parts of him didn’t blush, but the skin-half did, and both halves?   
  
Made him a major fuckin hottie.  
  
That was Artemis’ professional opinion on the matter.  
  
She was always professional. But. Well. Some things were more her specialty than others.  
  
Kinda like how Kaldur always tried to look serious, but was totally freaking out right now, and how Conner was still pissed from being dropped from like ten stories up into a stretch of prairie that now had a brand-spankin’-new crater to call its own. And how M’gann was definitely going to strike up a compliment-war with Cyborg if she weren’t cut off _really_ soon. And how Wally would be up to task with the whole cutting-her-off thing, because motor mouth never shut up.   
  
“Could we use that to match his face to whoever’s under the mask?” Wally said, bounding forward with wide eyes and a wider smile. He still had a faint bruise on his forehead. Nightlight must’ve got him good, for it to not have faded yet.  
  
“Nah, man,” Cyborg said, holding up a hand and giving an apologetic shake of the head. “Sorry. But you just didn’t get a clear enough look, and M’gann can beam y’all’s memories directly into my head, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got a database full of faces to match them to. I can try to run a scan of known criminals, but—”  
  
“—but there’s way too many, and it sounds like the guy’s never been caught before, in or out of costume,” Artemis finished for him, crossing her arms and nodding. “I could’ve told them that, but they really wanted to find it out the complicated way.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Cyborg said, rubbing the back of his head and looking askance. “It’s, uh, it’s no big deal. Nice to get out some, anyway.”  
  
“Get out of the _Watchtower_?” Wally said, scoffing. Then his brain visibly went into overdrive. His pupils dilated and everything. What a nerd. “Wait. Wait! Dude! Can you get us onto the Watchtower? Oh, man, we’ve gotta let Red up, he’d be so psyched—”  
  
“No can do, sorry,” Cyborg said again, looking even more apologetic than he had a moment before. “Security clearance. I mean. The rules are rules for a reason. I don’t want to make any trouble with messing things up right now.”   
  
“The League’d give you anything you wanted,” Conner said, scowling. So hot, but so crazy. She really hoped someone would sit him down and explain that using trauma as blackmail was a total dick move, and also shouldn’t be exploited too often, in case people stopped feeling so sorry for you. Hopefully it’d be not-her giving that talk. She had better things to do.  
  
Like stopping her stupid friends from running off and trying to handle the Bats.  
  
“Yeah, so you should totally put the word in that we need some more missions. It’s getting dull around here.” She flicked her hair and rolled her eyes like she didn’t care, but M’gann turned to look at her with wide green eyes, and even if she wanted to pretend otherwise, that sort of look sealed the deal. Artemis had to admit it.  
  
She was scared.  
  
No one with a working brain wouldn’t be. So, clearly, Kid Psycho and Conner weren’t really all up there in the brains department. But Cyborg, M’gann, and Kaldur?   
  
They looked cautious, at least. Grateful that Artemis had brought up something other than sneaking onto the Watchtower with Wally’s asshole brother-friend. Angled for getting new and interesting missions instead of proposing they chase down the thief on their own, or get assigned to it.  
  
But that just proved that Cyborg, M’gann, and Kaldur could actually use their stupid reasoning skills.  
  
Artemis, though?  
  
Artemis knew.   
  
And she was afraid.  
  
Certain Gotham born and bred could sense danger a block away. They knew bad deals with a single glance. They could pick a bad egg out of a crowd and take a city-wide detour to put as much distance between them and that egg as humanly possible. Just because Artemis wasn’t living in Gotham anymore didn’t mean she wasn’t still a Gothamite at heart.  
  
That wasn’t the kind of thing a handful of weeks in safety could just pry out of your soul.  
  
Much less when you were a part of that underworld. Much less when you lived it.   
  
Being Sportsmaster’s daughter probably wasn’t quite the normal experience, even in Gotham, but—but Artemis still lived in Gotham. Still had to walk the same streets as anyone else. Still herself through days and weeks of living on her own while her dad was out on a job and Jade was off in fuck-the-family-ville, living it up on commissioned work. And she’d survived. Tapped into the Gotham North gossip train. Watched the kids of rogues and petty criminals drop out here and there, one by one. Broken a law or two herself. Snuck into parties for kids much older than her, and never got turned away. And she heard stories about the Bats.   
  
She’d thought about the Bat. If he’d been up there on that rooftop, watching Wally and Conner get downed by a teenager in Kevlar. Kind of imagined a monster climbing the walls of that building to reach her, with her arrows hardly even slowing him down.   
  
She kept imagining him breaking her bow over his knee. That hadn’t happened. Her bow was still whole, leaning against the couch behind her in the main seating area of Mt. Justice, halfway through daily maintenance.   
  
“Yeah!” said Kid Can’t-Stop-Should-Stop. “Maybe you can get us some leads on that thing he stole!”  
  
Artemis and Kaldur shared a moment of mutual soul-groaning. They both groaned so deeply and internally, they felt it in their souls.  
  
Or maybe that was M’gann connecting them accidentally. Mutual emotions were weird.   
  
“The what?” said Cyborg, half-a-step too slow on processing, maybe because Kid Asshole had jumped three steps ahead of anyone willing to actually think things through.   
  
“The thing Nightwing stole!” he said, waving his arms for completely unnecessary emphasis. “Why he ran into the building in the first place. Did anyone get a good look at it? Anyone?”  
  
Artemis sighed and stuck up one finger, cocking her hip out, just wanting this to be over.   
  
M’gann took the image right out of her head and gave it to Cyborg, who presumably googled it, while Kid Running-Out-Of-Nicknames continued to talk.  
  
“Why’d he want that gauge? What’s it do?” he said, eyes alight, and getting all up in Cyborg’s personal space, until Cyborg eventually had to just take a couple steps back and hold up a hand to tell him to cool his freaking jets.  
  
“Nothing, right now. Just… nothing,” Cyborg said, once he got a few necessary inches of space. “It wasn’t finished. But it was meant to measure, uh, they call it the ‘Speed Force.’ It’s noticed around Flashes when they run. Just. Trying to understand better how they don’t burst into flame all the time, I guess.”  
  
“Hmm,” Kid Flash said, scratching his chin with his index finger, while Cyborg took the moment to make another few steps towards retreat.   
  
“…I should probably get going now,” he said, still taking another few steps back and looking at all of them with a strange sort of expression. “It was good, uh, hangin’ out with you all. See ya.”  
  
“Goodbye, Cyborg. You assistance has been invaluable.”  
  
“Goodbye, Cyborg! Thank you!!”  
  
“Mmuh.”  
  
Artemis flicked her wrist from her forehead in a sharp goodbye, while Wally waved lazily, still staring at the ground.   
  
“Well,” Artemis said, once Cyborg was out of sight and the sound of a zeta tube warming up could be heard from the transporter rooms, “While Kid Dofus melts his brain slowly, I’m gonna watch TV.”  
  
She turned and hopped onto the couch, letting her boots on the furniture.   
  
“Great idea!” Megan said, floating down next to her, smiling and apparently glad for the distraction. “What are we watching?”  
  
As much as Artemis knew Megan was hoping for an offer of her favorite sitcom, Artemis had something else in mind.  
  
“Brace yourself, M’gann,” Artemis said, grinning, watching Conner and Kaldur quietly resign themselves to sit with them while Wally continued to mumble. Artemis picked up the remote, turned the TV on, and pulled up the channel guide. “You’re gonna witness a Gotham Tradition today.”  
  
000  
  
 _“One way! Or another! I’m gonna find ya! I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha—“_  
  
Dick Grayson woke in pain.  
  
His ribs ached. His legs burned. His head ached. His eyes were stuck together, and he really wasn’t feeling up to opening them, anyway. Breathing was tiring enough. All he wanted to do was shift his body a few degrees, let out a sigh, and fall right back asleep until he felt better. He pried his eyes open.  
  
 _“One way or another, I’m gonna see ya, I’m gonna meetcha meetcha meetcha meetcha—_  
  
He rolled over onto his shoulder, reaching out to turn off the alarm on his bedside table. With each movement, his spine sent bolts of anguish through him.  
  
 _“One day, maybe next week, I’m gonna metcha, I’m gonna meetcha I’ll meetcha! I will drive past your house, and if the lights are all down, I’ll see who’s around—“_  
  
The sound cut off abruptly and then there was nothing to cover the sound of his groan.  
  
He really didn’t want to know what he looked like right now.  
  
Slow and reluctant, he pulled himself out of bed, trying to just accept the searing of knots in his arms and the aching in the arches of his feet as he stood.  
  
He stumbled towards his bathroom and barely avoided the full-body mirror, only catching a glimpse of the monstrous bruise that covered the entirety of his back and the creeping black eye that had gotten greedy and claimed skin down to his cheekbone. More bruises crawled up his hip, large dents in him that were hard like leather. His forearms bore fingerprints.  
  
He wasn’t sure if he should credit his survival to luck or a hero’s momentary hesitation to cause permanent harm. Maybe a combination of both.  
  
He really didn’t want to give that stupid Superman clone any credit, though. That was a stupid, petty thought, but it was about all that made its way through his brain fog.  
  
A couple minutes of shuffling around in the bathroom as carefully as he could, and he’d drawn a bath. The tub was large and porcelain with clawed feet and a detachable showerhead that felt wonderful on strained muscles. But right now, he really didn’t feel up to trying to manage the showerhead.   
  
He crawled into the tub, sank into the hot water, and moaned as tension left his shoulders.   
  
He fell asleep.  
  
000  
  
Bruce found him once the water had gone cold.   
  
A hand on Dick’s shoulder was enough to snap him awake and on guard. He relaxed once he realized who it was. Then, he started shivering.  
  
Bruce sighed at him and drained the tub before refilling it with hot water. He sat on the closed toilet seat right next to the edge of the tub, his fingers laced together on his lap, one leg crossed over the other, and already dressed for the day in a black business suit with a dark blue tie.   
  
Despite the warmth of the fresh water, Dick kept shivering. Once the adrenaline of being woken wore off, it was replaced with a gnawing hunger in his gut and dizzying light headedness, even though he was leaning back. Something smelled so much like food that it smelled like _oil_ , and made his stomach turn even harder than it already was.   
  
“Are you going to be able to do the opening?” Bruce asked as the water refilled. The jet was coming down right on his shin. That was pretty nice. Bruce’s hand returned to Dick’s shoulder and he leaned into the touch, glad for it, and let his eyes fall shut again.  
  
 “I can do it,” he said, his voice hoarse. “’M just gonna take it easy.”   
  
Bruce made another one of his little grunts, the sort that meant, ‘I’m skeptical, but I’ll trust you,’ and turned the water off once again. Dick laughed at him. It was a pretty pathetic laugh and it was hard to get out while his lungs felt like he’d just come out the other side of a really bad bout with the flu, but Bruce responded with another snort, so things were probably just fine.  
  
“You didn’t come for breakfast,” Bruce said, and he shifted obviously enough that Dick made the effort of opening his eyes to see what was going on, only to find a plate of scrambled eggs and a few round sausage patties, two triangles of toast, a fork and knife, a glass of water with a packet of hydration powder beside it, and a mystery-medicine cocktail in a Dixie cup set on a platter. The platter had two clinging arms at either end which fastened easily to the edges of the tub. No need to worry about spillage or dropping the plate with his shaky fingers. Still, Dick watched the food suspiciously, before glancing back at Bruce and cocking an eyebrow, because as much as Bruce’s cooking had improved since Dick’s first arrival in the manor, any sort of egg that crossed Bruce’s path had to be treated with extreme caution.  
  
Bruce pulled a face at him, exasperated and probably way too tired to continue on like this. “Jason made it.”  
  
Dick sat up—ignoring a stabbing pain in his lower back—chugged the concoction in the Dixie cup, and got to work on the breakfast. His hands had long gone pruney, but that was all right. It made picking things up easier, even if everything he touched got slightly damp.  
  
“We have an hour and forty-five minutes before we’re expected at the opening,” Bruce said as Dick ate. “The commute will take up a large portion of that. Once you’re finished eating, I’ll do your makeup and help you get dressed, but we need to get moving.”  
  
“I can do my own makeup,” Dick told him around a hunk of sausage.   
 “Not fast enough while you’re stiff,” Bruce said. “The painkillers will take time to set in. I will have reserves for you later, but for now, time is paramount.”  
  
“Can’t we show up late?” Dick said, destroying half the eggs.   
  
“We are already going to be several minutes late.”   
  
“Oh. Okay.”   
  
Bruce nodded and then sighed again, his face dipping into shadow a moment. Then, he pulled his smartphone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times before setting it on the sink’s counter next to Dick’s toothbrush holder. A moment later, Hotel California started playing, echoing around the bathroom and distorting anything said too quietly. To compensate for that, Bruce leaned in closer, keeping his voice low, but clear enough.  
  
 _On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, warm smell of colitas rising up through the air…  
_  
“You’re benched for tonight.”  
  
Dick choked on his eggs. “No!”  
  
Bruce scoffed at him in a way that meant, ‘just you try and stop this.’ Dick was usually up for that challenge. Right now, his everything ached too much for him to come up with a wittier response.   
  
“Then you’ll stay in the Cave or with the Canaries in the decoy.”  
  
“But the guys who hurt Jason—”  
  
“I will find them. If you rest now, you might feel well enough by Tuesday to escort Timothy. But you’re not going out in your condition, and definitely not targeting people affiliated with the Joker.”  
  
“It’s not like I’m going after the Joker himself,” Dick said, and realized too late how close it came to a whine.   
  
“The point remains,” Bruce said, which was the worst kind of agreement.   
  
Dick groaned, sinking down further into the tub, and suddenly feeling kind of sick from how fast he’d eaten his breakfast.   
  
“Come on, now,” Bruce said, picking up the tray now that Dick had moved away from it (rude), and rolling up his sleeve again to reach down and pull out the tub’s plug to start the water draining. “Come on up. Weren’t you just saying you were fit enough for tonight?”   
  
This time, Dick’s groaning was just because he was so done with Bruce’s shit.   
  
Still, he let Bruce help him up from the tub and dry him off. Underwear on and foundation for his collarbone and wrists.   
  
Getting the rest of the way dressed was a little easier, and Dick did admit it was easier to deal with makeup when he just sat still and closed his eyes and let his mind wander, letting someone else do it while he just tried to enjoy the gentle motions and relax into it. It wasn’t exactly like being in the circus again, but that was where he’d first gotten things like makeup applied to him.   
  
The association helped.   
  
It was easy.   
  
He was just going out to be a crowd pleaser.  
  
000  
  
 _“No sign of Bruce Wayne yet, and the festivities have been scheduled to start several minutes ago, but—“_  
 _  
“Well, you know how our dear old Brucie is, Jenna,”_ the dark-haired male newscaster said to his associate, a blond woman whose shoulder-length hair was being whipped around by the wind. “ _Alllways fashionably late.”_  
 _  
“That’s true, Jeb, and—oh! I think that might be them?”_  
  
 _“Hey!”_  
  
They waved at a passing limo in the background, turning back to the cameras with practiced, patented smiles.   
  
_“Sure is, ladies and gents! Bruce Wayne is finally here, and that means festivities can officially begin!”_ Jenna said.   
_  
“Can’t believe he’s even late to his own events!”_ said Jeb.   
_  
“Like you said, Jeb. Good ol’ Brucie.”_  
  
They laughed.   
  
“Uh,” Kid Flash said, raising a hand. Gestured sharply to the screen. Raised his hand again. “What is this?”  
  
“Gotham tradition,” Artemis said, grinning, leaning forward on the couch with her elbows on her knees, propping her chin up on her knuckles.   
  
“Watching the news?” said Kid Flash from the other side of the couch.   
  
“Shut up and wait. We haven’t gotten to it yet,” Artemis said, for once not snapping at him, so much as shooting a very, very smug look towards Kid Flash.   
  
Kid Flash looked mildly unnerved.   
  
_“Here we are, folks_ ,” the male newscaster said, though he was no longer in the picture. They’d switched to another camera, one closer to the car, which was focusing on the door. Flashes of cameras in the Gotham gloom kept messing with the lens, making it all look even darker than usual as the door opened on the black car, revealing a sleek, red interior.   
  
Bruce Wayne stepped out of the back door of the vehicle, already beaming and holding up his hand in a greeting.   
_  
“Man of the hour, Bruce Wayne has finally arrived to the opening ceremony for the newest Wayne House. This will be the second Wayne House opened this year.”_  
  
“ _You’re totally right, Jeb. For the last eight years, Wayne Houses have been working as alternative care options for needy families, fostered and orphaned kids, taking them in and making sure they are clothed, fed, and educated after being taken in under Mr. Wayne’s Wing. Last year, Mr. Wayne said that he plans to continue to open houses until either the problem is solved, or he runs out of money, whichever comes first!”_  
  
 _“Haha, I gotta say, Jenna, if I had that much money, I would never have thought of something like this.”  
  
“Same here, Jeb. What would you have used all that money for?”  
  
“Maimi, private pool, haha. Buying my wife jewelry!”  
  
“Well, that’s sure thoughtful of you, too.”_  
  
“What,” Wally said, “The fuck.”  
  
“Shhhh,” said Artemis. “Use your eyes!”  
  
“ _Annnd, here comes the most famous Wayne-kid of them all!_ ” said Jeb.   
  
The camera zoomed in on the door as a young man got out of the car, small as he slid out the door, his suit well fitted, his hair combed to the side and weighted down with enough hairspray to halt a small army.  
  
He shuffled from one foot to another, a sloppy grin over his face as he looked in the camera, and gave a little wave.   
  
Artemis let out a deep, dreamy sigh.  
  
“Look at that hunka-hunka-hottie.”  
  
“Ew,” Wally said, staring at her. “What?”  
  
 _“Richard Grayson-Wayne’s heading over to stand beside his benefactor, Bruce Wayne. Mr. Wayne, thank you for doing this! Is there anything we should know about today’s special event?”_  
 _  
“Mornin’, Jenna, how’re the kids?_ ” Bruce Wayne asked, smiling and leaning into the microphone. “ _Don’t answer that. I’m sure they’re gonna be great. Well. About today—there’s a lot of great restaurants in Gotham.”_  
  
“What,” Wally said again.  
  
Kaldur also looked confused.   
  
Artemis rolled her eyes.   
  
“Don’t you all get it?” she said, sticking her hands out at the TV. “That’s the Waynes! They’re hot!”  
  
“I mean, I knew that!” Wally said.   
  
He wasn’t mentioning which part he knew: the hotness, or the Wayne, but knowing him, Artemis could believe he didn’t know about the Waynes.   
  
“But like— you all watch them?” he asked. “Like… as a thing?”  
  
“Hey,” she said, “Sh. Shhh-sh-sh-sh-sh. No judgey. They’re single, hot, rich, international celebrities from Gotham, you dingus, of course we watch what they do!”  
  
 _“—Dickie’s shown me a lot of them—_ “  
  
Wally snorted, and Artemis wasn’t sure if it was from the nickname or what she’s said that provoked the reaction, but either way, she felt justified in pulling off her boot and chucking it at him.   
  
It hit him right in the head.   
  
Which was funny, except when she considered super speed, and realized he’d let himself be hit.   
  
“Why didn’t you dodge, moron!”  
  
“I thought you didn’t want me to!”  
 _  
“—so I thought I’d give a little boost to their service, so Tutsi’s Teriyaki will not only be catering the first dinner for this Wayne House, but will also be passing out food at this event. Eat up, folks, it’s all on me!”_   
  
A small crowd off to the side cheered as he clasped Richard Grayson-Wayne’s shoulder and pulled him into a hug, the both of them laughing.  
  
Artemis and M’gann cheered too.   
  
“Artmeis?” M’gann asked as soon as the cheering stopped, her eyes wide.   
  
“Yeah?” Artemis asked, looking over.   
  
“What’s ‘Tutsi Terkiyaki?’”  
  
“I dunno, but we’re totally gonna find some of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So i started writing this chapter before Christmas, got back in the country, met askull4everyoccasion in the undertake fandom, started an undertake fanfic, went through two jobs, drove around the country (literally, around, making a loop there and back again) started moving the house to sell it, and am starting college again after a year sabbatical for medical
> 
> it has been a long break my friends
> 
> thank you to everyone who’s stuck with this so far
> 
> i’m stuck between wanting to just upload whatever shit i have and wanting to make very specificly put-together, finely crafted chapters, haha…
> 
> whatever i can get up, i guess
> 
> for those who follow it, non timber mala is also updated


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim makes his first kill

When Tim was ten years old, he made a list that proved his parents loved him.

They would call on his birthday every year.

They sent gifts in the mail.

He was a very lucky kid--he got the new gaming system as soon as it came out, and could play on it without a time limit. Mrs. Mac let him do whatever he wanted, really. He could go out in the yard and he would come back in and eat a dinner, and he had a good bed to sleep in. Nothing bad had ever really happened to him.

Tim Drake was a lucky kid. A lot different from some of the kids his parents met on their travels. Some didn’t have enough food to eat, or didn’t have places to sleep, or had no parents at all. For a lot of them, new games and a new gamestation to play them on just wasn’t even a thought. 

Unlike a lot of ten year olds, Tim Drake knew _exactly_ how lucky he was. When he went to school and they had morning prayer, the other kids would pick out things they’d read about in that morning’s reading time--the teacher handed out a bunch of Kid’s Magazines for international news and had them walk to the front and talk about what they’d read--and the kids could volunteer things to pray about.

So they prayed for kids in Ghana and kids in Rwanda and for people in Honduras, and people who were hurt in the tsunami, and people in Bialya, and North Rhelasia, and one time there was a monster attack and one girl spoke up and said she wanted to pray for _that_ , and another girl said, “Aw! I was gonna take that one!” 

But Tim knew how lucky he was to not be in any of those places their teacher helped them pray about in their little private school, which other people in Gotham couldn’t afford to go to, and so they should also be thankful for _that_ , for not going to a public school, no matter how tiring school was or how much he didn’t like the food there.

He got food. He should think of the starving children in Africa.

(“Yes, Timothy. _All_ of Africa,” Mrs. Mac said.)

(She’d finish cleaning the house, wash his dishes, and head home until noon the next day.)

(She was the maid. Not his Nanny. Not his mom.)

Tim fell asleep in a house with the best electronic defense money could buy, and couldn’t step out of his room until 7 am or he’d set it off in the hallway.

His parents gave him a charmed, safe life.

Surely, they loved him.

\--

There was a time when Tim spent his night under his father’s desk.

He shouldn’t go into the hallways at night, so--

And lots of people slept without beds. He wasn’t any better than them. Why did he deserve better than them? He should sleep on a hard surface, too.

This was what he deserved for living so comfortably for so long, even if it was a hollow and empty, preformative gesture.

He had trouble sleeping in his bed sometimes, anyway.

...if this sleeping in bad places was nice for him, did that mean it wasn’t actually an okay thing to do?

He should.

Sleep where he didn’t want to.

Like everyone else.

...he’d still go to school on time the next morning and talk about comic books with his friends, and about the TV show he’d watched the night before, but that night, he’d sleep under his father’s desk, and wonder if Mrs. Mac would come looking for him if he didn’t show up for breakfast. 

\--

One of his earliest memories was from when he was seven. According to statistics he would later read, later childhood memory recall of other places, other events, rather than _personal_ memories--those were more likely to be found in collectivist cultures. Places where community was emphasized over the self. 

Women tended to have later memories than men in those cultures.

And then there was a paper where trauma could wipe out a whole subset of memory.

But that couldn’t be right, because one of his earliest memories was watching the Graysons fall.

But that wasn’t his trauma.

That wasn’t his.

He was a lucky kid. Dick Grayson had lost his wonderful parents, but Tim Drake still had his own parents, who he was certain loved him, because his mom had called him up three years later on his eleventh birthday and left a message on the answering machine while he was at school, saying, “I love you, Timmy; I can’t talk long, but I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Your present’s in the mail. We’re having a great time at the dig, your father and I; last night we got together with the rest of the group and headed down to a little bar in town to--”

…

Tim listened to it, and went over his list again.

_They say they love me._

_They buy me presents for my birthday._

_When I was sad in eighth grade, mom made me soup._

_Dad put my picture in his wallet and put my artwork on the fridge._

_They ask Mrs. Mac to look after me and make sure I’m healthy._

_They send me to a good school._

_I’ve got food to eat and a roof over my head._

_They say they love me._

_They love me._

He had to believe that.

And then, when he was thirteen, he realized the list hadn’t changed. He’d been going over the same events over and over. 

_They say they care._

_On my birthday I get presents._

_I don’t starve or sleep on the street_.

Over and over. It got harder to remember the soup he’d been made, or the artwork on the fridge, when it had been years since his mother made him soup, or his dad pinned up his photos.

And at thirteen, Tim figured it was about time they stopped him from starving and sleeping on the streets, too.

The list had run out.

…

That’s why when Tim wandered out into the Batcave and was told Nightwing _wasn’t_ going to come out with him, he had to try very, very hard to not pull up that list. _Cut my hair once; smiles a lot, teaches me to fight, gets upset when I’m sad--_

\--Batman would be coming with him instead. 

Nightwing was still hurt from the other night, it made _complete_ sense that he wasn’t coming out to help Tim on his first kill. If it was too much danger then of course it was better Nightwing stay home instead of straining himself and risking a worse injury against some thugs that’d managed to sneak up on Jason.

So Tim tried not to feel it personally. Because it _did_ make sense, and he wouldn’t hold it against Nightwing at all. That would be awful of him to do.

…

And it would be nice to be out with Batman. They hadn’t worked together one-on-one much outside the cave, and Tim _did_ really like working with him in the cave. Nightwing taught them a lot about getting around the city and working out in the field, but Bruce really taught them the basics of everything in the cave and got them _ready_ to work with Nightwing and stuff, and…

And so Tim had spent a lot of time with him in the cave, but not really a ton outside it, and…

It _was_ very different than being with Nightwing, who never really stopped moving. Batman stopped a lot. He moved a good bit slower. He was honestly a _lot_ easier to keep up with, and he liked to know exactly what building he was landing on and what route they were taking, rather than Nightwing, who seemed to know the destination and not care too much about what they were going over to reach it, so long as they went quickly and as high up as possible. Maybe because he felt if he was fast enough, it didn’t matter if he were spotted or not.

…

With Batman, when they went slow and were in bright areas, he would walk on Tim’s side, protecting him from the edges of the buildings they walked on, and hiding him from sight in his cloak.

…

Tim felt safe in the dark.

\--

It was about thirty minutes past midnight when they got where they were going; still pretty early in the night, all things told. Most places that closed for the night had only been closed for a little over an hour, and the late-shift workers had just barely gotten home. The last trains had stopped for the night and the downtown was one of the only places still pumping with light.

This place was called the Bowery. It was in Northern Gotham still, but not… the best place, to put it politely.

Gotham was a very old city. Her patterns of wealth mimicked those in England, rather than the newer inland U.S. cities, where the poorest places in a city usually huddled together, and the richer neighborhoods were further out, like a gradient. In Gotham, the rich and the poor neighborhoods lived side by side, separated by barely a street or a fence, and one wrong turn or walking a block too far and you’d stopped being in New Town and wandered right into Park Row.

The Bowery _was also_ right beside Park Row, but had none of the illusions of safety that New Town did.

…

There was a church in The Bowery. There were plenty of churches in Gotham. But Batman saw the steeple, and pointed it out to Tim, and quietly pushed them to go the other way, and give it a wide berth.

…

It was unlikely Tim would be able to find the exact goon that hurt Red Hood. Stephanie had taken one of them out at least the other night, and he suspected she’d wounded the other, but-- it was difficult to be _that_ exacting in revenge. And for this, Tim was okay with that, Red Hood wasn’t exactly _nice_ to him, but Steph seemed to like him, and--

...he wasn’t doing this for Red Hood anyway. He couldn’t tell himself _who_ it was for, if it was for Tim Drake, or for Stephanie, or Batman, or because he was expected to, but he _was_ doing it.

Batman swept them around the church and towards the backstreets, closer to Robbinsville. That was when they spotted their targets. A handful of people in work overalls. Men and women, but mostly men.

Little smiley-face buttons were on their lapels. 

They weren’t wearing masks or makeup right now, but they were the people he and Batman were looking for.

Joker goons, loading tote bins into the back of a large, gray truck.

Tim glanced at Batman to find his mentor already waiting for his eyes. He held a hand up and signed for Tim to wait and stay hidden.

And then, the Bat descended.

\--

...Tim met Stephanie in the basement of a chapel. Not the church he and Batman avoided, but a _chapel_. Something small and boxy that was only identifiable as religious from the little sign out front that read:

_6th Street Chapel_

_Your Savior Welcomes You!_

It was in middle Gotham. Tim remembered that. It was in middle Gotham and it didn’t have any bars on its windows. It was built on a slight enough slope that there was a partly exposed basement with openable windows peeking out the top. They pushed outward into a little alleyway, just above the ground. Some weren’t locked, because it was already hard enough to move them open or closed from the inside. Or maybe someone forgot.

But if it was already a little open, if you had a small enough screwdriver, you could take the screws out of the hinge and slide inside to get out of the rain and raid the breakroom fridge for community supper leftovers.

That night, it was unlocked, but when Tim went to look for the hinge, the window was barely holding on.

It was just slotted in place, not actually _held_. Simply propped up as the damp and dirty streets of Gotham seeped under the painted metal frames.

...stupid and cold, he thought _‘oh cool, less work for me_ ,’ and pushed the window aside, shimmying feet-first on his stomach into the basement of the church, kicking out for footholds toes straining to reach the floor.

He wasn’t very quiet, breaking into what he assumed was an empty church closed for the night, and it was only when he got back to his feet and looked that he realized someone had heard him, and was watching from the dark of the kitchen doorframe.  

…

The next he remembered, Tim was huddled up on the red plastic couch in the back of the kitchen beside Stephanie as she handed him a sandwhich and can of coke taken from the fridge.

In the cabinets there were granola bars for the sunday schoolers and daycare kids who came here after school to work on homework and learn about Jesus. Most of the food here was stored for those kids, probably. There were plastic fruit cups and soda packs and boxes of spaghetti old enough to have little holes drilled in them from bugs. When it was realized, those boxes would be thrown out without being used, and new ones would be bought, and it wouldn’t strain anyone’s finances. There was sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter and several donated cans of homemade jams, a handful of apples, and a half-eaten box of donuts which would be four donuts short by morning.

It was about two months since he’d run from home, and there were missing children’s posters up for him on community boards and on the inside of grocery store windows, and in the back pages of newspapers, and in the back of this church too, pinned on the bulletin board.

This was his mom’s childhood church. She still donated regularly, and when the preacher thanked donors, she was always high on the list. Mrs. Mac took him here on Sundays. 8 am. Because they were experimenting with reaching out to the youth, and they had a band for the early service. Sunday School came afterwards while the adults went down to Bible Study, and when Tim was in elementary school he’d ride the bus here after classes to sit and watch Veggietales and play with clothespin peg dolls and cut out felt shapes to decorate the church with new banners. He’d sat in the pews upstairs beside Mrs. Mac and she always told him to bring money from his allowance to put in the bowl when it was passed along, and told him his name meant _Honored by God_.

Saint Timothy, besieged all his life by stomach problems, was eighty when he was dragged through the streets and stoned to death after trying to stop a procession of worshipping Greeks in the streets.

Tim didn’t think he would have done anything like that, no matter how much he believed in God, but he never said anything like that aloud. Maybe that made him a coward.

He wondered if he was even more a coward if he ran away to somewhere he knew, rather than somewhere he didn’t know at all.

Every day, all he’d have to do would be wait in the basement until morning and let the preacher find him, and he’d go back home.

His sweater would be clean again. He’d get his good, heavy coat. His threadbare shoes would be replaced with new, waterproof boots for the season. He’d have an allowance again, and a soft bed to sleep in, and never have to go hungry.

“I thought you were supposed to be kidnapped?” Stephanie asked him, and he took the sandwich and coke.

The boy in the missing poster had shorter, neater hair, and he was smiling, and his shirt collar was stiff and symmetrical.

The boy on the couch had a heavy sweater instead, but it was better suited for a warmer time in the year, and he’d layered plenty of shirts with collars under it, but none had been ironed in weeks.  He shook his head at her question.

“Why aren’t ya going back, then?” she asked, cracking open her own can of soda, and Tim bit into and chewed his ‘pbj’ to buy a little time to answer-- and in the end, all he could answer with was a shrug, anyway, because--

Because he was just another body on the streets in Gotham, taking up space and resources that should’ve gone to people who _had_ to be on the streets, who _couldn’t_ just go home at any time, who couldn’t just abandon this life and start over somewhere familiar and safe-- 

“Why’re you here?” he asked, swallowing iron.

“I ran away,” Stephanie said.

“Oh,” Tim said, staring down at the sandwich in his hands. If he weren’t here, Stephanie could’ve had twice the sandwiches. Twice the soda. “...yeah, I wasn’t kidnapped.”

He thought he could feel her staring at him, but when he glanced over, she was too busy eating.

Oh.

“...so why’ _re_ you out here?” she asked.

“I ran away,” he said too, and wondered what he’d say if she asked why--

But she didn’t. She snorted and started to laugh.

“You kidnapped _yourself._ ”

…

Yeah.

He guessed it was a pretty stupid thing to do.

\--

….it happened very quickly. There were lots of bodies on the street now, and then there was Batman, and at his feet, one more still alive.

It had all been very quiet. Almost before they were able to cry out.

He shoved the last one down. Tim heard a yelp, but nothing breaking, and Batman looked up at him again.

Tim was already on his way down.

“This one,” Batman said, voice cold and rough as the bottom of a river. Tim didn’t have to choose who to do, and that helped some--he could just… fix it in his mind that _yes, it would be this one_ , and look down--

Look at their eyes, wide and shining with tears that hadn’t overflown yet, and seeing the breath catch in their throat. “Wait! Please, I didn’t do anything--” they croaked. “--please, I have-- I have kids--”

Tim thought of himself. Sitting in his parents’ office, under their desk. Waiting for them to come home. His chest was tight. His hands were shaking. Something was cold, blowing past his ears--

And Batman put a hand on his shoulder.

Tim swallowed, and looked up at that mask instead.

...Right.

He didn’t have to look the-- _them_ \--in the eye. He could make that bobbing air in their throat stop.

And Bruce Wayne had plenty of orphanages.

Tim pulled out the knife--

\--

...they hadn't been in the old schoolhouse for long. They couldn't have been. Tim had passed out for a while, but they couldn't have been here for long.

Tim got the feeling Victor Zsasz wasn't the type to keep them alive for long.

He didn't remember being caught. He just remembered running, and Steph _telling_ him to run faster, and her sprinting up ahead of him, and--

And he wasn't sure what else, but with how his body pulsed with pain after each heartbeat, he--figured he must have hit his head… but did Stephanie…?

No.

There was something warm beside him.

He reached out, searching for her hand.

Something hit him.

...for a long moment, he wasn't sure what it was. Just that it stung, and made a _SLAP_ , and his eyes were rolling up in his head.

“Don't touch me,” came not-Stephanie’s voice.

“Don't hit him!” came Stephanie’s, and the sound of a struggle.

Tim forced his eyes open, trying to crawl away from what’d hit him, only to find the room unbalanced and hazy.

He started to understand the mass of colors and dust just as a large prune-colored blob crawled towards him and touched his bleeding, aching face.

“Timtam…?” Stephanie asked, tugging him to lean against her shoulder, and he felt himself go boneless all over again, realizing he was with someone safe. “Tim, it’s gonna be fine, it’ll be okay…”

“Wha’ ‘appen…?” Tim asked. It was hard moving his mouth. Like there was cotton in it. There wasn’t.

...he was focused enough on trying to move his mouth that it took him a moment to realize how long Steph let his question hang in the air.

If he focused his eyes a little more, he could see Steph had a big, blotchy bruise forming on the side of her head, and was biting her lip like she did before she decided whether to lie or not.

Then, almost hidden by the distant ringing in his ears: “ _Tut, tut, one stitch, two stitch, it’s really not that hard to deal with,”_ and sc--

Someone screaming?

He tried to look--

Steph shoved herself in front of him and blocked his vision. When he glanced up, looking for her eyes, questioning, he just saw something wet and drippy, and her hair waving as she shook her head.

“Don’t look,” she said.

“You done with him?” said not-Stephanie. Tim flinched at the sound.

They weren’t alone. They _weren’t alone_ . The floor beneath him was lumpy and rough, and he realized if he lay his head down fully there were _bars_ above them-- thin and aluminium, unrusted, and if there was enough room for three people to be in then--

Dog kennels.

Were they in a dog kennel?

_Why were they in a--_

“Good. Keep him shut up. If you draw his attention now, we’re fucked.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Steph said, voice pitching high. “Would you stop saying that stuff??” 

Her shoulders were hunched up so tightly around her neck.. Tim wanted to reach up and ease them down, but his hand was shaky when he lifted it.

“ _You shut up_ ,” not-Stephanie said, and-- and Tim got a glance at them. They were wearing a red suit. A black cape.

There was a mask over his eyes, and thick dark hair curled around his ears.

Tim mouthed his name in wonder.

“We just need to buy time,” Robin said, scowling and doing something with his wrist. His gloves had been taken. His hands were so pale against his suit. “Batman’s coming.”

Stephanie said, “ _Stop it_ ,” and kept shaking. “Batman might save _you_ \--”

She didn’t finish. Victor Zsasz had turned to look in their direction. Turning away from the cop on the floor, whose hands had been stitched into an outstretched position, handcuffs sewn between their fingers. Robin already knew who would be sewn into them--

…

Tim didn’t remember much else. He remembered Stephanie bursting out of the cage when Zsasz came to take her.

He remembered crawling out afterwards.

He remembered Stephanie howling, not like a hurt animal, but like a banshee, calling death. Calling death.

But back then she was not a murderer.

She was a girl with a broken pipe she’d found near the ground, and was covered in blood that wasn’t her own.

And a dark shadow stretched behind her. Two of them, looking for their bird, and--

And Jason had said _Batman will save us_.

\--

...

Tim was quiet on the trip back to the cave.

Bruce had called the batmobile incognito to the edge of Gotham, and they drove back instead of navigating the series of tunnels.

He was sure he was supposed to be able to walk on his own after this, but… he was glad to just be able to sit down, and stare at his hands, and try to think of nothing.

It was like Nightwing said it would be.

Batman never said ‘do it.’

He never told him how.

He just… gave Tim a person, and time, and--

And Tim had pulled out a batarang, and--

And a hand fell on his shoulder, now, in the present. Tim jumped out of his memories as Batman growled to him, “We’re almost at the cave.”

...Tim swallowed and nodded.

“You rest tonight. You did a hard job.”

...he did a hard job.

Tim nodded again, his ears ringing a little. His eyes stinging. But Batman had to be proud of him, right?

...the batmobile pulled into the lower garage a few minutes later, and the metal door rolled shut behind them, sealing them off from the cave system.

He got out of the car with his legs still shaking and braced himself on its hood while he shut the door. He didn’t quite make it to the staircase before Batman came up behind him with a hand on his back and steadied him up the stairs.

Stephanie hadn’t shaken this much when she’d done it. He remembered her coming back into the cave with Red Hood leaning on her shoulder, helping hold in the blood, mask streaked and face pale, eyes wide-- but she’d been walking steadily and alerted Batman over the com almost as soon as they’d been on the move again, and she’d only started to shake once the needles had come out. 

And here was Tim, barely making it up the stairs when nothing had even gone wrong and he hadn’t done half the work--

 ** _“_ ** [ **_SURPRISE_ ** ](https://youtu.be/pB0Uiq4NTs0) **_!”_**

“Ahh!!”

Tim fell backwards down the staircase, only to be caught by Batman’s chest. 

“Oh shit!” said Nightwing.

“Nice going, blue blunder, you almost killed him!” said Red Hood.

“ _Language_ ,” said Batman, and Nightwing whined.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Tim asked, stumbling onto the main deck from a push to his back.

And then he looked around.

There was a table with a white cloth in the middle of the messy cave, covered in food-- much more formally covered in food than it usually was, and it definitely didn’t usually have a table cloth. There were colorful party streamers hung above it, and several more chairs setting around than usual, with Stephanie and Red Hood standing around them, unmasked (as was Nightwing) and watching Tim stumble around.

It wasn’t… extravagant, exactly, but it completely stuck out in the usually disorganized Batcave.

“We’re having a party for you!” Nightwing said, pulling out a party-blower and blowing it right above Tim’s head.

“Why...?” he asked.

“Your first job!” Nightwing said, grinning. “Bruce let us know over the radio. You did good, little guy.”

He swooped down and wrapped an arm around Tim.

Pulled Tim into a hug.

Oh.

...even through layers of armor, Nightwing’s arms were warm. He smelled like shampoo and makeup. Tim smelled like sweat and terror, he thought, and Nightwing shouldn’t hug him in case it was really bad to smell-- but even when Nightwing pulled away, he kept a hand on Tim’s wrist.

“You did good,” he said again, and smiled, and when Tim glanced back at Batman, he nodded too.

Oh.

“Hurry up Timmy!” Stephanie called from beside the table. “Jason made cupcakes! And you have a present!”

Tim blinked hard, having trouble looking away from the two older men beside him. “I… I have a present?”

He didn’t really need a new gamestation, or a new computer, or anything like that right now… He still followed as Batman nudged him forward through the cave by the hand on his back, and Nightwing led him by the wrist to the table.

Jason _had_ made cupcakes. Tim wondered if they were poisoned, but Steph grabbed two off the table--one in each hand--and set it in front of Tim while taking a big bite of her own. They had bright green frosting. It smelled like buttercream. He was sat down in a chair, staring down at it on a napkin. Behind it were bowls of chips and some salsa, and a bucket of take-out fried chicken and four two-liters of soda.

Was this food for real parties?

A second after he was sat down, Nightwing also thrust a small, brown package into Tim’s hands. Far too small to be a gamestation, or even just a game. “Here.”

“Uh,” Tim said, staring up again.

He stared at Stephanie this time, lost.

“Open it,” she said, nodding.

He did. His hands had forgotten to shake. Was this still the same day?

He opened it, sliding his fingers under the brown paper and carefully ripping up the tape, trying to not tear the wrapping. He failed. The wrapping was just a brown paper bag and the tape was far stronger.

...inside was a mask.

A black mask, much the same design as the one he still had on his face.

“Uh!” he said, eyes wide. “It’s a mask?”

“The newest one,” Batman said from behind him, voice as low and comforting in its rumble as always. “After Nightwing’s run-in with Superboy, it was clear you’d all need something a bit different to keep you all safe. The others already have theirs, but… this seemed to fit the occasion.”

Tim turned and stared up at him.

They couldn’t see misty eyes behind the mask he was already wearing, could they?

He hoped not.

He was getting a new mask.

They expected him to be here to need one?

“Oh,” he said, voice cracking, and Batman took it as a signal to continue talking while Nightwing sat beside him, still patting Tim’s arm.  
  
“It contains a thin lead shield which should protect you from X-ray vision. It’s waterproof so there should be no leaching to worry about, but they will be slightly warmer and heavier than your old masks. That also means there will be slight sweat buildup, so be aware of that.” 

“If they’re waterproof do they double as swim goggles?” Nightwing asked as Tim turned the dark thing over in his hands.

“No,” Batman said. “I waterproofed the mask, not your face.”

“Aww…”

“Thank you,” Tim said softly.

He could feel Nightwing turn to look at him.

“...for this,” Tim continued after a moment. “I really…”

Stephanie, once again, saved him.

“Eat a flubbin’ cupcake, Timmy,” she said, and shoved what tasted like a handful of frosting onto his mouth.

And he licked her hand, and she shrieked, and it was all okay again.

\--

Tim had been given a gift when he came to live with the family in the cave. A few weeks after being brought in, he’d been given a webcam. It linked to a hospital room across the city, where an old man lay comatose on a bed in the permanent resident ward.

That night, he ate a cupcake while watching the feed, his old mask on his bedside table, and for the first time in what felt like a while, he smiled, and talked to the man far away.

It was easier to feel closer to his father, now that the long silences weren’t voluntary or out of neglect.

“Hi, Dad,” Tim mumbled, green frosting still on his lip as he grinned. “It’s been a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so it's been a year since I updated due to a lot of things. One of them was the great computer crash of 2016 which lost me literally all the things I'd written beforehand for this fic adn also my timelines that I wrote out for it. It's also because in 2017 I went to Chile for four months, lost four cats starting on New Years and most recently on my second day in Chile, lost a dog, lost my grandfather, came back from chile, hopefully am never going to be spoken to or about by my grandmother again, and am graduating from college too next spring
> 
> also, justice league came out
> 
> i'm a little tired but sometimes remembering bruce is a tired shitfuck who people still love and who think he makes a big difference for continuing to do things even if he thinks he doesn't succeed is very helpful honestly
> 
> dedicate this chapter to my cats, one of whom is sitting beside me right now being unusually cuddly, and one of whom sat with me this morning when I woke up at 3 am, lay down for 3 hours, still couldn't sleep, and then banged out the rest of this chapter after it'd been hanging for a month
> 
> let me know what I should do next because, again, I have. Lost the timeline. 
> 
> I don't know where to go anymore.
> 
> ...but aside from all that, thank you to everyone who left comments both when the chapter first went up and also in the interim period while I was struggling to write it. I barely replied to any of you, but please know I read them and that one thing I've been telling all my other-fandom friends is that the Batman fandom is one of the most wonderfully responsive fandoms I've ever had the pleasure of posting in. So please don't think I'm ignoring you: please think that I am emotionally strained and your comment was the last thing and it stunned me enough into silence that I am literally silent in typing, too. I will as always try to be better at responding but... if I do fail, please don't think it's not because I appreciate it. In fact, it's because words can't quite explain exactly how much I do.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and critique are always appreciated!


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